Preamble

The House met at Eleven o'clock

PRAYERS

[Mr. SPEAKER in the Chair]

NEW WRIT

Motion made, and Question proposed,
That Mr. Speaker do issue his Warrant to the Clerk of the Crown to make out a new Writ for the electing of a Member to serve in this present Parliament for the Borough Constituency of Bristol, West in the room of the Right Honourable Sir Walter Turner Monckton, K.C.M.G., K.C.V.O., M.C., Q.C., called up to the House of Peers.—[Mr. Heath.]

11.5 a.m.

Mr. R. J. Mellish: While I do not, of course, oppose the issue of the Writ, I should like to take the opportunity to ask the Patronage Secretary what is the position now in view of the result of the Lewisham, North by-election. Will the Government continue with the issue of the Writ, or will they resign and face the country as a whole?

Mr. Speaker: That is not relevant to the Question before the House.

Mr. Emrys Hughes: Before we approve the Motion, I should like to suggest to the Chief Whip that he ought to organise a day of national mourning.

Question put and agreed to.

Orders of the Day — ANIMAL BOARDING ESTABLISHMENTS BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

11.6 a.m.

Mr. Julian Ridsdale: I beg to move. That the Bill be now read a Second time.
This Bill seeks to regulate the keeping of boarding establishments for animals and for purposes connected therewith. As the law stands at present, anyone may start a business for the boarding of dogs and cats on his premises irrespective of whether the premises are suitable and in spite of the fact that he has little or no knowledge of animals and may even have been prosecuted for cruelty to animals in one form and another.
This has been a matter of grave concern to the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals for many years. While there are certainly some boarding establishments which are quite satisfactory, reports from R.S.P.C.A. inspectors throughout the country make it only too clear that there are many others which are quite unsuitable for the housing of animals, with unsatisfactory or no proper kennelling, lack of exercise facilities, inadequate supervision, poor ventilation, and many other unsuitable features.
I have examined the reports of the R.S.P.C.A. inspectors dating from the autumn of 1956 and based on evidence collected from all over the country. In each area there are reports of overcrowding, no proper cleanliness, poor drainage, and few precautions to prevent the spread of disease. In fact, some owners obviously run the business purely for profit with little thought for the comfort or well-being of the animals which they board.
The Pet Animals Act, 1951, which was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell), who is here, I am glad to say, to support me today, has undoubtedly done a great deal to improve the standard of pet shops throughout the country. In a similar way, the Bill aims at improving the standards of premises where dogs and cats are boarded. Huddersfield Corporation was so concerned about animal boarding establishments that in the


Huddersfield Corporation Act, 1956, it included a Section which laid down that all such premises in its area should be registered and inspected. The passing of the Bill would have the effect of extending the improvements of the Huddersfield Corporation Act to such premises throughout the country.
I am glad to say that the Association of Municipal Corporations has expressed its support for the Bill. That very important Association agrees that legislation is needed to provide for the inspection and licensing of all establishments where animals are boarded. I can well understand that after reading the reports of R.S.P.C.A. inspectors, to which I have referred. If the Home Office has not seen them, I should be glad to provide copies. I have been informed, too, that the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons would welcome legislation to regulate the provision of accommodation for pet animals, provided that due attention is paid to the professional responsibilities of veterinary surgeons in this matter. I realise that they established that principle in the Huddersfield Corporation Act last year and I should certainly be prepared very carefully to consider their views in Committee.
Under Clause 1 of the Bill all animal boarding establishments must be licensed by the local authority on payment of a fee not exceeding 40s. The local authority has the right to lay down conditions on the licence applicable to the premises in question. Under this Clause, local authorities are given guidance as to the points to be borne in mind when determining the granting of licences. These concern such things as suitable accommodation respecting the size of the establishment, the number of animals kept on the premises, exercising facilities and such items as temperature, lighting and ventilation, cleanliness, precautions against the spread of disease, the supply of suitable food and drink for the animals and the keeping of a register of animals housed on the premises.
Owners of animal boarding establishments who are refused a licence by the local authority, or who are aggrieved by any condition laid down in the licence, are given the right of appeal to a court of summary jurisdiction in the place in which the premises are situate. Such court may give directions in respect of

the issue of licences, or in respect of the conditions subject to which a licence is to be granted. It will be noted that it is proposed that the licence shall remain in force for 12 months, as it is in the case of licences issued under the Pet Animals Act, 1951, in relation to pet shops.
In this way it would ensure that the owners of animal boarding establishments would see that their premises did not deteriorate and that the conditions laid down on their licence would continually be complied with, as otherwise they would run the risk of losing their licence, or being unable to renew it after the expiration of 12 months.
Under Clause 2, local authorities are empowered to appoint one of their officers, or approve a veterinary surgeon or veterinary practitioner, to inspect animal boarding establishments in their area at all reasonable times, with a view to ascertaining whether an offence has been or is being committed. The Clause also gives local authorities power to order the closing of such premises or part thereof on the advice of a veterinary surgeon or veterinary practitioner in the event of an outbreak of infectious diseases. It is an offence for the owner wilfully to obstruct or delay any person in the exercise of his powers of entry and of inspection.
Clause 3 is a penalty Clause, under which a person guilty of an offence under Clause 1, for example, running an animal boarding establishment without having obtained a licence, or failing to comply with conditions laid down by the local authority, is liable to a fine not exceeding £25, to imprisonment not exceeding three months, or to both such fine and imprisonment. For obstructing or delaying a person in the exercising of his powers of entry or inspection, an owner is liable to a fine not exceeding £25.
In addition, persons convicted of any offence under the Bill, or any offence under the Protection of Animals Act, 1911, the Protection of Animals (Scotland) Act, 1912, or the Pet Animals Act, 1951 may have their licences cancelled, or be disqualified from keeping a boarding establishment for such period as the court thinks fit. There is, however, a right of appeal. Clause 4 explains itself.
Clause 5 is the interpretation Clause which lays down, among other things, that animal boarding establishments shall


include private dwellings which are Often used for such purposes. It does not include premises or part of the premises of veterinary surgeons or veterinary practitioners.

Wing Commander Eric Bullus: Would my hon. Friend consider including in that provision the exemption of greyhound racing establishments, which are supervised by veterinary surgeons, an exemption which was included in the Huddersfield Corporation Act?

Mr. Ridsdale: I can assure my hon. and gallant Friend that I shall be pleased, in Committee, to consider what he has said, if the Bill gets to that stage.
It does not include the premises or part of the premises of veterinary surgeons where animals are under treatment, nor the part of premises kept by a person under the authority of a licence granted under the Pet Animals Act, 1951. Some pet shop proprietors do, however, also board animals and it is intended that in such instances they should be licensed for such purpose in respect of that part of their business. It will be seen that the expression "animal" in the Bill means any dog or cat, as it is, in general, only those animals which are boarded at such establishments.
Finally, I should like to point out that the Bill is non-controversial. I am heartened to have supporting the Bill the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) who has kindly agreed to second the Motion. I was encouraged when reading the Second Reading debate on the Pet Animals Measure to see what my hon. Friend the Member for Chislehurst (Miss Hornsby-Smith) then said. In 1951, after a rather discouraging reply from the Home Office, she talked about their lukewarm attitude to the Bill.
If my hon. and learned Friend the Joint Under-Secretary is feeling at all cold-hearted today, he should remember the words his colleague used then, which will warm his heart. If the House thought it right, in 1951, to pass the Pet Animals Act, I am sure that it would be right to follow that course with this Bill, which has had a wide measure of support not only in the House, but in the country as well. I hope that the House will give the Bill a Second Reading and that time

will be found to complete all its stages so that it can go to another place and become law before the Session ends and be put into force next January.

11.19 a.m.

Mr. Anthony Greenwood: I beg to second the Motion.
The hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) has made an agreeable and persuasive speech. When a few years ago I spent some days in Clacton in a vain endeavour to stop the hon. Member being returned to the House, I did not anticipate that the time would come when there would be an issue on which we would be in such complete agreement and on which he would do me the honour of inviting me to second a Motion. I accept his invitation with pleasure. I am very glad indeed to have the opportunity of seconding the Motion in a purely personal capacity and not, of course, on behalf of the Opposition.
About six years ago I had the privilege of seconding the Motion for the Second Reading of the Pet Animals Bill, which was introduced by the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell). I think it would be true to say that this Bill is really a pendant to that Act. In the Act of 1951 the hon. Member for Wembley, South sought to regulate conditions in the case of animals being offered for sale. Now we seek to regulate the conditions in which animals can be boarded in these establishments. As such, I think this is a most valuable Measure, and I hope that the Second Reading will not be opposed.
I know there are criticisms of some of the provisions of the Bill, to which the hon. Member for Harwich has very properly referred. For example, I understand from my right hon. Friend the Member for Don Valley (Mr. T. Williams), who at one time was Minister of Agriculture, that the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons has misgivings about some of the provisions of the Bill. I think there might well be some force in the criticisms which it makes. I therefore welcomed the conciliatory references in the speech of the hon. Member for Harwich and also in his reply to the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North (Wing-Commander Bullus). I think, however, that all these points of criticism are essentially Committee points. Some


of them are not dissimilar to those we had to thrash out in the case of the Pet Animals Act, 1951. I am sure that with reasonable good will on all sides they can be cleared up during Committee stage to everyone's satisfaction.
The hon. Member for Harwich referred to reports drawn up by inspectors of the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals. I remember that when I was a member of the Council of that Society we felt great concern on this score. Our anxiety was not allayed by the fact that the inspectors have no right of entry to these premises. I understand that no one has right of entry unless it can be proved that there is ill-treatment sufficient to constitute cruelty or neglect under the provisions of the Protection of Animals Act, 1911. In consequence, the efforts of R.S.P.C.A. inspectors are frequently frustrated.
One of the inspectors in Kent wrote on 1st October, 1956, about a boarding establishment in his area:
… this woman is very peculiar in her ways, and never allows an owner of a dog she is boarding to enter her premises. She always meets the dog at the end of the farm lane, and returns it to the owner the same way. The premises as a whole are in a filthy condition. …
Of course, if she takes that attitude to the owners of the dogs, she would not be likely to co-operate very enthusiastically with inspectors of the R.S.P.C.A. Another inspector reported on 24th September, 1956, about an establishment in North London that the proprietress:
… will not allow any person whatsoever to enter her kennels, so I cannot report on their suitability, …
The reports of inspectors, therefore, are necessarily inadequate, but in my view they are sufficient to create some proper apprehension that things are not always exactly as they ought to be in these establishments.
The hon. Member for Harwich has referred in rather general terms to the reports of the Society. I wish to mention one or two specific examples to illustrate his general thesis. The first example I give is about bad conditions in one of these establishments. It comes from a report made by an inspector of the R.S.P.C.A. in North Wales, on 26th September last year. He describes the premises as follows:

… The kennels are inside brick buildings which at one time must have been used for stabling horses. The walls are infested with rats and mice, and the premises are very dirty. The insides of the buildings are very dark and no electric lights are available (oil lamps or candles are used). There are no precautions taken to prevent the spread of infectious disease or fire. During the summer months there is a tendency to overcrowd. …
The report adds that the proprietor:
has been warned several times. There is very little room to exercise the dogs in the yard, and at no time does he exercise them in the streets or fields. …
Another example comes from Nottinghamshire and is taken from the report of an inspector on 1st October, 1956. He describes an animal boarding establishment in this way:
… His kennels consist of a converted stable with about 12 dogs pens built round the side, some 3' × 6' in size—lighting is poor—ventilation is poor—the place is dirty, no lime wash or paint—littered with rubbish—feeding dishes were rusty and dirty—drinking bowls were not provided, he claimed that the dogs went out in the yard and drank from a trough —a large courtyard is there for exercise—straw bedding was wet and dirty.…
A third example relates to the unsuitability of some of the people who are at present responsible for running these establishments. This example is one which was provided by the R.S.P.C.A. inspector in Sussex on 20th September last year He described the premises by saying:
The whole premises are very unsanitary, no lighting, and no precautions regarding the spread of disease. Three dogs have escaped from these kennels within the last month, and no attempt has been made to recapture the dogs. The kennels are run by a girl of about 16 years … I think she is totally unsuitable to run such an establishment …
It seems to me to be wholly wrong that it should be possible to set up an establishment for boarding animals with no regard to the suitability of the premises or the character or competence of the person setting them up. I think that is just as wrong in the case of boarding establishments for animals as in the case of pet animal shops.
Six years ago, thanks to the hon. Member for Wembley, South, Parliament decided to end one abuse with regard to pet animals. I hope that today we shall extend still further the protection we give to animals and that, thanks to the persistence of the R.S.P.C.A. and the enterprise of the hon. Member for Harwich, today we shall write a new page in the history of animal welfare.

11.27 a.m.

Mr. Ronald Russell: I very much welcome this Bill. I should like to congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) on introducing it, and to thank him and the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood) for the kind references they have made to the Pet Animals Act, 1951, which, through good fortune in the Ballot, I was able to introduce in this House. I think that Measure has done some good. As has already been pointed out, this Bill continues into boarding establishments for animals the work which that Measure did in relation to pet shops, pet stores and market stalls.
I think there is a clear case for this Bill. I know that some people will say that we have to prove that legislation is needed before introducing a Bill like this and that this subject can be covered by the Protection of Animals Act, 1911. I think it is quite clear, from the examples quoted by the hon. Member for Rossendale—and I could quote some more but do not want to detain the House unduly —that that Act does not go far enough to stop abuses of this kind. What we want to aim at is prevention rather than cure. That is exactly what is aimed at here.
I hope that on this occasion my hon. and learned Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State to the Home Department is going to be able to give the Bill his blessing and to do everything possible to help it through the House. On the previous occasion I very well remember that the then Under-Secretary, the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas), made what I thought was a very lukewarm speech and left us rather with the impression that the Home Office was not very enthusiastic until Mr. James Hudson, the then hon. Member for Ealing, North, described the Home Office as
… the great refrigerator of all warm-hearted movements.…"—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 6th April, 1951; Vol. 486, c. 592.]
I have a feeling that that taunt rather goaded the Home Office into taking a different attitude. After that, as I think will be agreed, we had nothing but help and co-operation from the then Under-Secretary in getting the Bill through Committee and, finally, through Third Reading. Therefore, I hope that my hon. and learned Friend will be able to give

enthusiastic support to the Bill today and all possible help to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich in piloting it through its remaining stages.
There is another reason why, in these times, it is very desirable that we should consider a Bill of this kind, especially when one considers the crimes that go on in other countries. As we know only too well, some countries still practise slavery. There are others which practise the brutal torture of human beings. Therefore, I think it shows us up in a better light when, instead of having to consider things of that nature, we can turn our thoughts to the prevention of cruelty to animals, a subject which I am sure is of the utmost interest to most countries of the Western world. On the whole, great strides have yet to be made in certain parts of the world before they reach anything like the lengths to which we in this country have gone in the prevention of cruelty to animals.
In taking this further step and in removing cruelty and unsatisfactory conditions in animal boarding establishments, we are doing a good thing for the country and for civilisation as a whole. I hope there will be no question about the Bill getting a Second Reading and that it will not be long before it is on the Statute Book and in operation along with the Pet Animals Act.

11.32 a.m.

Mr. F. H. Hayman: I, too, should like to add a word of welcome to the Bill and to express my thanks to the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) for bringing it forward. If I may comment on what the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell) said about my right hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas), I think it would be true to say that, but for the great help which we received from him during the Committee stage of the Pet Shops Bill, the proceedings might not have been as harmonious as they were. If I recollect aright, they were concluded within just over an hour and we were able, with the help of my right hon. Friend and that of his Department, to get the Pet Animals Bill through all its stages. It is now an Act of which we are proud. If I had had any luck in the Ballot ahead of the the hon. Member for Harwich, I should have chosen this Bill to introduce.
I have in my constituency, a lady, highly qualified, who keeps a model cattery. I took advantage of that fact to ask for her comments on the Bill. She is an expert on matters of this kind, and she extends a very great welcome to the Bill. I hope that I may be permitted to draw attention to some of the points which she made to me in order that the hon. Member for Harwich, and perhaps the Home Office, may take them into account before the Committee stage of the Bill. I speak as though that stage were a certainty, because I am sure that the Home Office will not object to the Bill and that the House will do all it can to facilitate its passage.
The first point made by this lady was that she feels that a veterinary surgeon ought to be consulted in case of illness. That rule applies in her establishment, and I think it is a very wise precaution. Whether we can include such an obligation in a Bill of this kind, I am not sure, but perhaps its promoter will consider the point.
Clause 1 (2) states that the fee for granting a licence may be any amount up to but not exceeding 40s. I wonder whether it would be more practicable for a specific amount to be inserted in the Bill. Clause 1 (3, b) refers to animals being exercised daily. On that, my constituent says:
I think you will appreciate that cats could not as a rule be exercised in the same way as dogs, except in so far as the housing quarters are of a size to enable them to exercise at will.

Mr. Charles Doughty: What view does the hon. Gentleman take about Siamese cats?

Mr. Hayman: This lady has a very great knowledge of Siamese cats, which I do not share. We have not kept any pet animals for many years simply because we thought that it would be cruel to them as we have to be away so often. The lady goes on to say:
We ourselves find shelves for vertical movement of great importance in cat pens.
On Clause 1 (3, c) she says:
Adequate isolation facilities will certainly be interpreted differently by different authorities, and in the case of feline infectious enteritis
the prevention and the control of the disease
would hardly be possible without very special precautions and equipment not usually used by vets.

With regard to Clause 1 (3, f) my constituent says:
As far as the Bill is concerned, what would be the advantage of keeping a register, and who would have the powers to inspect it?
I would certainly want to see a register of animal boarding establishments, and I presume it would be inspected by an officer of the local authority. Whether the police would have that right, I do not know. That is a point which, perhaps, the hon. Member for Harwich will take into account. With regard to Clause 1 (4) this lady asks:
Can a local authority have costs granted against them in the event of a successful appeal?
That, again, not being a lawyer, I do not know. Perhaps the hon. and learned Gentleman will tell us when he replies. On Clause 2 (1) she says:
I suggest the officers of a local authority entitled to enter premises for inspection should be more carefully specified, or it should be left to the veterinarian appointed by them.
Would the public health inspectors assigned to this job, if they were so assigned, have any special qualifications for the task?
On Clause 2 (2), which deals with an outbreak of infectious diseases, my constituent asks whether it is possible for the diseases to be specified. That is a point that might well be considered, because, in a Bill of this sort, it is desirable for the terms to be as precise as possible. On Clause 5 (1), the lady asks:
Why would not the Act apply to veterinary premises where animals are kept for treatment for more than twenty-four hours? Is this already covered by an existent Act? Such premises are often without any but the most primitive means for quarantine and isolation and this might undo the provisions of Clause 2 (1).
I think that my constituent probably speaks with some knowledge on this point, and, therefore, in spite of what the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons may say in criticism of the Bill, perhaps that body might comment on this lady's criticism of this provision in the Bill. Clause 5 (2) is, I think, the definition Clause. On that, my constituent says:
'Animal' should surely apply to any bird or mammal, since parrots and monkeys are often boarded under inadequate conditions.
I am not competent to speak—

Mr. Doughty: Does the hon. Gentleman include elephants?

Mr. Hayman: This is a Bill which I should have thought the hon. and learned Member would have taken seriously.

Mr. Doughty: I do not think this is a serious Bill, and if I succeed in catching Mr. Speaker's eye I propose to treat it with the ridicule which I think it deserves.

Mr. Hayman: The hon. and learned Gentleman can make his own speech when the time comes, if he succeeds in catching your eye. Mr. Speaker.
I am informed that the Cats Protection League is in process of making a model boarding home for cats, and I think that that fact might be brought to the notice of the promoters of this Bill. I hope that we may rely on the support of the Minister, because without it the Bill will founder, and I am hopeful that the precedent set by my hon. Friend the Member for Lincoln in 1951 will be followed.
An old friend of mine who was a magistrate—he has now passed on—once said to me, "When a person is convicted of cruelty to a child or an animal, I fine him hard, because neither a child nor an animal can act or speak in defence of itself." I think that expresses the feelings of the vast majority of people in Britain, and for that reason I support this Bill.

11.42 a.m.

Mr. Charles Doughty: I hope that on a Friday, or, indeed, at any other time, I shall not be accused of jeering when addressing this House. I fundamentally disagree with almost every word of this Bill, and I cannot congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale), who ordinarily speaking is so sensible in everything he does, on having sponsored this Measure. When they look at the Bill with a little more care, I am sure that hon. Members will treat it with the ridicule which it so richly deserves. [HON. MEMBERS: "No."] I hope they will, but hon. Members may speak as they please.

Mr. Ridsdale: While appreciating what my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty) has to say, may I point out that he did not come into the Chamber when I was making my opening speech? He did not hear the point. I made, when introducing the Bill, that one of my reasons for doing

so was that the Huddersfield Corporation thought fit to introduce a Measure of a similar kind in 1956; and that, secondly, it has the support of the Association of Municipal Corporations. I hope my hon. and learned Friend will consider that before he talks about ridiculing this Bill.

Mr. Doughty: I was about to say that I did not hear the first few minutes of my hon. Friend's speech, but I heard the whole of the speech of the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood). I am sorry if I disagree with the Huddersfield Corporation, but I shall not sleep any less soundly by reason of that. Nor indeed was I the least impressed by the hon. Member for Wembley, South (Mr. Russell), who talked about cruelty to animals. It is always easy to arouse sympathy in that way, as indeed did the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman). But when we talk about it we must be certain that the matters we are discussing have some relation to the statements we are making.
Although I did not hear the first few sentences of the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich, I did hear the speech of the hon. Member for Rossendale, and I listened with care for any reason which he could put forward to show that there was the slightest necessity for this Bill. The real objection seemed to be that inspectors of a private society could not enter private premises to make their own inquiries. The hon. Gentleman referred to one or two reports over the whole country, I think there were three in all, to show that there were cases and incidents which had been reported to him, through the society, of where there had been undesirable boarding. "One swallow does not make a summer," neither do two or three incidents make a case.

Mr. Russell: There are many more examples which could have been quoted, but we did not wish to detain the House.

Mr. Doughty: When one is bringing in a Bill it is important to give some grounds to show the necessity for it. I am pointing out that there are no grounds for this Bill.

Mr. Ridsdale: Has my hon. and learned Friend bothered to acquaint himself with the contents of the report of


the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and the evidence contained in it?

Mr. Doughty: I took the trouble to read the Bill—

Mr. Ridsdale: No, not the Bill, the report.

Mr. Doughty: I have not read the report, but I listened to the excerpts given by the hon. Member opposite. I read the Bill, and it did not impress me in the least.
So far as I know—here I am open to correction—if anyone wishes to keep a boarding establishment for human beings —unless they wish to sell intoxicating liquor and thus bring themselves within the ambit of the licensing laws—they can do so without the slightest difficulty. If anyone living in a residential neighbourhood by the sea wishes, during the summer months, to let two rooms to anyone and board them for a holiday period, they can do so. Yet, if this Bill becomes law, if they wanted to board a cat or a dog, they would have to get a licence from the local authority. Are we not becoming a little over-sensitive? Shall we not make ourselves look ridiculous if we pass this Bill to protect dogs and cats, and, as the hon. Member opposite said, canaries and elephants—

Mr. Hayman: No, the hon. and learned Gentleman said that.

Mr. Doughty: —when we are not doing the same thing for human beings? Just think what would possibly happen, according to the wording of this Bill. Suppose three or four people were going away on holiday and they knew that Mr. Jones or Mr. Smith round the corner, for some reason, was not going away—

Mr. David Jones: Why pick on "Mr. Jones"?

Mr. Doughty: We can call him anything we like—call him Mr. Smith.
These people who are going on holiday go round to Mr. Smith and say, "Look here, we are going away on holiday and Fido will be alone. Will you put him up? Will you put up Tibbles as well, because they hate to be parted?" Then there might be six or seven animals all boarded in a private house and the

owner would be fined for doing his neighbours a kindness.
Of course, it would have to be done for gain, I realise that. But there is no reason why people should do it for nothing, and so it is done for gain. Because this man has obliged a few of his neighbours, for gain, he is guilty of an offence; whereas, had he put up the son or daughter of his neighbours while they went on holiday, he would not be guilty of any offence at all. And so I ask hon. Members to treat this Bill with the ridicule it so richly deserves.
Think of the position of local authorities. Upon them is put the burden of carrying out the provisions of this Bill. Are they to hold council meetings to decide whether animals of the same sex are to be exercised together? That is what the Bill says. Or are they to decide whether the animals should be exercised every day; or whether a pet poodle requires more exercise than a collie; or whether mongrels are fit to associate with thoroughbred dogs of ancient lineage? The thing becomes ridiculous.
Are people who have been elected to the council, because of their knowledge of local affairs—whatever their politics may be—and because they know what the neighbourhood requires, how streets should be lit and roads swept, solemnly to decide whether reasonable precautions are being taken to prevent the spread of infectious diseases among animals? Goodness me, the whole thing becomes ridiculous. They would merely consider a report from a veterinary surgeon who had been sent round to investigate, and he, in fact, would be the arbiter of these questions.
I am not surprised to hear that the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons is against this Bill. Veterinary surgeons would not like to take on any such work.

Mr. Dudley Williams: I hesitate to interrupt my hon. and learned Friend, because I have great sympathy with his views. But I cannot find any reference in the Bill to the question of how animals should be exercised. I wonder whether my hon. and learned Friend would develop that side of his argument and draw the attention of the House to the part of the Bill which covers that point.

Mr. Doughty: It was something which the hon. Member for Falmouth and Camborne said. He was talking about exercising. I will read all the things which have to be done.

Sir Patrick Spens: The Bill refers to "exercising facilities."

Mr. Doughy: It was "exercising facilities." Whether "exercise" would be included in "exercising facilities—

Mr. Ridsdale: The hon. and learned Member said that he is not surprised that the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons is against the Bill. It has made certain proposals, but it is not against the Bill.

Mr. Doughty: I hope that its proposals are such as to wreck the Bill.
Again, upon appeal, magistrates' courts are to be burdened with questions of whether appropriate steps have been:
… taken for the protection of the animals in case of fire or other emergency.
What does that mean? I ask as a lawyer. One would have to go into court and discuss with the magistrates whether adequate facilities were provided against fire. Does that mean a fire escape for the animals, and buckets of water for them to throw upon the fire? What does it mean? It has no meaning at all as applied to this type of premises. If we are to have this at all, why confine it to dogs and cats? Let us not burden local authorities and veterinary surgeons with this wholly unnecessary duty. Let us leave matters where they are.
Generally speaking, right throughout the country, establishments of this kind must be carried on reasonably well, because owners are interested in their pets. If they are interested enough to pay for their keep, they are interested to see that they are reasonably well maintained. Let this House reject the Bill on the ground that it is unnecessary and pettifogging. We shall make ourselves somewhat of a laughing stock in the country if we allow the Bill to go even to Standing Committee.

11.52 a.m.

Mr. Arthur Moyle: First, I wish to commend the hon. Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) and to say that I am glad that he sought the sponsorship of my hon.

Friend the Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood), whose work in animal welfare is well known and whose support of the Bill gives it quite a respectable all-party look.
I listened with great interest to the speech of my hon. Friend the Member for Falmouth and Camborne (Mr. Hayman) and to that of the hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty), who spoke, I thought, somewhat testily. It was most unusual for him. I am bewildered as to the ground upon which this testy feeling is based. I can explain it only in terms of Lewisham, North. That might have had a most unusual effect upon hon. Gentlemen opposite—an effect which does not in any way inflict itself upon me.
To return to the Bill, the hon. and learned Member for Surrey, East mentioned elephants. I thought that he was making a humorous comment, but he appeared to take it quite seriously, so let me tell him that elephants are subject both to licence and to inspection in accordance with the provisions of the Performing Animals Regulation Act, 1925. Usually, they are not kept as pets so much as for the purpose of performing before the public. It is not usual for the House of Commons to do, in 1957, what has already been done in 1925, and I expect that the hon. Member for Harwich had that in mind when he drafted the Bill.

Mr. Doughty: May I assure the hon. Gentleman that neither towards him nor any other Member, still less towards you, Mr. Speaker, do I feel in the least bit testy. Does the hon. Gentleman realise that what he says may well be true of performing animals, but that it would not include elephants kept as pets or those kept in zoos, small or large?

Mr. Moyle: I will now resume the line I was trying to follow.
The hon. and learned Gentleman is an eminent lawyer and I am glad that the hon. and learned Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department is present to keep what I hope will be a friendly eye on the Bill. I am sure that you, Mr. Speaker, will agree with me when I say that, since you assumed your high office we have had a whole series of Bills which have dealt with varying


aspects of animal welfare. I would suggest to the Under-Secretary that it would not be a bad idea if, in the spare time available at the Home Office, he were to consider doing for animal welfare what has already been done about Income Tax, to prepare a consolidation Bill so that we may have a consolidated Act of Parliament covering all aspects of legislation on animal welfare.
As I understand, the Bill asks that those who run boarding establishments for cats and dogs for gain should be subject to licence and inspection. Those hon. Members who took part in the Second Reading debate of what is now known as the Pet Animals Act, 1951, urged an extension of that Measure to cover the establishments now under discussion. Those with knowledge of rural districts know that that is where most boarding establishments exist. There are relatively few in the large towns.
If one consults any provincial newspaper one finds certain people advertising for sale a whole series of different breeds of dogs and cats. Why? These people buy them up when they have a chance and they hold them in boarding establishments and then advertise to get a ready sale. I have seen some of these places. I have seen dogs—not cats—penned up without any evidence of either water or proper lairage conditions, while the owner has been away for the whole day. I have tried to ascertain the conditions under which some of these places are run, and I have satisfied myself that there is a strong case for subjecting them to some kind of law and provide licensing, under certain prescribed conditions, and inspection.
I have not the slightest hesitation in supporting the Bill. I wish the hon. Member for Harwich every success in his effort to place it on the Statute Book.

12 noon.

Mr. Dudley Williams: I want to take up some of the points that have been made by the hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle). I was surprised to hear of his experiences in examining kennels and animal boarding establishments and finding that they were not maintained at high standards. I know several boarding establishments for animals in Devonshire, but none like

those to which the hon. Gentleman referred. I have always found them maintained in the highest condition. The people who run them are real lavers of animals and usually know far more about the proper maintenance of animals than do the owners themselves.
I oppose the Bill, which is quite unnecessary. I have a dog. I have to put the doe out to a kennel establishment sometimes when my duties compel me to attend the House of Commons. I have put my dog into several kennels in the vicinity of my constituency and have always found him extremely glad to go there and almost unhappy to come home again. Whether that is a reflection on my handling of him I do not know. I have never seen any sign of my dog being miserable when going to the kennels.
I apologise to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) for missing his opening remarks. I am not satisfied that the need exists for amending the law. Clause 1 (3) sets out the conditions for the granting of a licence by the local authority for the keeping of a boarding establishment. The first condition is:
That animals will at all times be kept in accommodation suitable as respects size of quarters, number of occupants, exercising facilities.
What does that mean? If a cat in a boarding establishment is ill and the lady running the establishment decides that, in the interests of the cat, it will be best to take it into the house or possibly to keep it in her bedroom to have it under observation, she will lay herself open to prosecution for so doing, and be liable, under Clause 3,
on summary conviction to a fine not exceeding twenty-five pounds.
She might also have her livelihood taken away from her, or her licence suspended. That is rather heavy going against an unfortunate woman who, in the kindness of her heart, takes an animal into her house from the cage or kennel in which it is normally kept. Why she should thus offend against the law and bring its whole majesty against her is something I cannot understand.
Reference has already been made to "exercising facilities". My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey. East (Mr. Doughty)—I was sorry I had


to intervene in his speech—mentioned the difficulties experienced by animal boarding establishment keepers when this kind of animal protection is carried to extreme lengths. Should poodles be exercised with retrievers or spaniels with tame elephants? Some people may wish to keep a tame elephant as a pet. We are the centre of a large Commonwealth and some of its inhabitants look upon elephants as desirable pets. I understand that some of them keep pet elephants and certainly do not look upon them as animals who merely perform at the circus.
Clause 1 (3, a) refers to
temperature, lighting, ventilation and cleanliness.
What does this mean? Is the person in charge of a boarding establishment to have a list of the temperatures at which various animals are to be maintained? Must a snake be kept at one temperature and a monkey at another? In point of fact, the people who make use of these establishments take great care that their animals are properly kept. They would not take a monkey to an establishment that had no facilities for looking after it. Monkeys have to be kept in a fairly warm temperature. They cannot run around in the yard when there is snow on the ground. It is not necessary for such matters to be defined in regulations issued by local authorities.
Subsection (3, b) of Clause 1 proposes
that animals will be adequately supplied with suitable food, drink and bedding material, exercised daily, and (so far as necessary) visited at suitable intervals;
What does all this mean? Does anyone suggest that people in the business of looking after animals will not support them with suitable food, drink and bedding materials? How long would their businesses last if they did not? Nobody would board animals with them and they would be out of business very quickly.
More than that, they would be liable to civil action by the persons making use of their establishments, and if an animal had been treated cruelly there are sufficient powers under existing laws for action to be brought against those responsible. I cannot believe that the Royal Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals would allow anyone to get away with that sort of behaviour.
Subsection (3, c) proposes
that all reasonable precautions will be taken to prevent and control the spread among animals of infectious diseases, including the provision of adequate isolation facilities.
That is a reasonable suggestion but in most boarding establishments for animals the first thing to do is to try to make certain that animals taken in have no infectious disease.

Mr. F. A. Burden: Does not my hon. Friend appreciate the extreme difficulty of ensuring that a dog, for example, is not carrying the germs of some acute infection when it is taken in? It is sometimes impossible for a kennel keeper to ascertain an animal's condition.

Mr. Williams: I am glad that my hon. Friend has raised that point, because it enables me to develop the argument that it is not always practicable for a veterinary surgeon to make sure that an animal has not some incipient disease when it is left at the establishment.
All I am saying is that if, in the course of its stay in the kennels, the dog, the cat, or the elephant, starts to develop a complaint, to protect himself the keeper of the establishment would either have the animal removed to the veterinary surgeon, with whom such people already work in close contact, or he would have isolation facilities in his own establishment to which the animal would quickly be removed. He knows that if he gets a wave of infectious disease through his establisment, the first thing he would do would be to have trouble with his customers. If my clog came back with mange, I would not be likely to send it to the same establishment again in case it got pneumonia, hard pad or any other complaint.
Next, what is meant by
appropriate steps will be taken for the protection of the animals in case of fire or other emergency"?
Everybody takes appropriate steps for the protection of his or her property. I live in the country, a long way from the fire protection facilities that are enjoyed by townsfolk. Indeed, in the part of Devonshire where I live, if my house caught fire, it would be extremely difficult for it to be put oat if I relied upon the fire brigade from Exeter, or some other city, because there is no water and no


powerful hydrant which can be connected. As a result, I have a liberal supply of fire extinguishers in my house. That is the normal precaution that any person of intelligence takes.
Surely the person who is in business, trying to exist by making—I hardly dare mention the word sometimes—a profit, would not be so silly as to run the chance of his whole business being destroyed because he had not had the sense to visit one of the well-known companies, whose products can be seen lying around the Palace of Westminster, and purchase a few fire extinguishers. So I do not believe that that provision is at all necessary.
Then we come to the usual bits of interference with the liberty of the subject under paras. (e) and (f) of subsection (3), that
at no time shall more animals be kept on the premises than are provided for in the licence.
When a person has kennels for large dogs like Great Danes, and, possibly, each kennel is suitable only for one Great Dane, if a friend comes to ask whether the proprietor could take in his two fox terriers and put them in the same kennel, the Clause would prevent this in case the number of animals throughout the whole establishment exceeded the number specified on the licence.
Then we come to the proposal
that a register be kept.
Anyone in business keeps some form of register. He has to keep in touch with his customers. He might want to circulate them with a Christmas card and he would not be likely to lose touch with the people who provide him with his livelihood. It is quite unnecessary to bring into a Statute
that a register be kept containing a description of any animals received into the establishment (including sex and approximate age)"—
I do not know why that is included—
date of arrival and departure, and the name and address of the owner, such register to be available for inspection at all times".

Mr. Doughty: Is my hon. Friend aware that such requirements are not necessary even in the register at the Ritz?

Mr. Williams: I do not make frequent use of the Ritz. It is an expensive hotel to which Socialists with expensive tastes can afford to go.

Mr. James H. Hoy: In that case, it is probably empty.

Mr. Williams: I am quite certain that my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East is right in saying that under the Bill more particulars would be required about a cat in an animal boarding establishment than are required of any person making use of the facilities of any hotel throughout the whole of the United Kingdom. That is making heavy weather of it.
I do not think we want this sort of statute embodied in our legal system. I am certainly not satisfied, from the evidence I have heard adduced so far in this debate, that the need for such legislation exists. I am sorry that my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) is getting a little nervous, but I have almost finished.

Mr. Burden: Carry on.

Mr. Williams: I am not satisfied that there is need for such legislation where animal boarding establishments are concerned. I hope, therefore, that the House will not give the Bill a Second Reading.

12.16 p.m.

Mr. F. A. Burden: I support the Bill and am proud to have been one of its sponsors. I would say to my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Dudley Williams) that I am not at all nervous, because I am not an animal, but if I were an animal and my future rested with my hon. Friend, I should certainly be nervous. My only other comment about his speech is that, having heard him, I can now understand why his dog is always so anxious to go to a kennel and so reluctant to come home.
I was much more interested in the speech by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East (Mr. Doughty), although I must agree with an hon. Member opposite that my hon. and learned Friend was a little testy and, indeed, at times venomous, and that his speech rather lacked humour. Any humour that there was fell very flat and the testiness was unnecessary. I thought that the case made by him as a learned member of the Bar was a very bad one.
My hon. and learned Friend said that there was no evidence whatever of cruelty to animals in boarding establishments and my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter


said that the boarding establishments which he had visited were well run. If that is so, those managing them have nothing whatever to fear. My hon. and learned Friend then drew a parallel between the boarding of human beings and the boarding of animals. I considered it an extremely bad comparison. I have never yet known of any human being who goes to a boarding house for holiday or any other purpose who is unable to free himself entirely and to walk out of the front door if he so wishes. It is, however, quite impossible for any animal confined by human beings in a boarding establishment, in a kennel, in the hold of a ship or any other place, to free itself from the evil surroundings in which it might be penned by the human beings who send it there.

Mr. Williams: My hon. Friend says that if the establishments which I have visited were properly run their owners would have nothing to fear, but they have two things to fear. One is the constant, unnecessary irritation of inspection and the second is the provision that they must pay 40s. a year, which, in my view, is unnecessary.

Mr. Burden: My hon. Friend speaks of "constant irritation". Does he really imagine that a constant stream of inspectors from the local authority would be visiting establishments every day? That was a rather foolish statement by my hon. Friend. Furthermore, my hon. Friend made a strong point of the ability of people to run these places at a profit, but now he suggests that the payment of 40s. a year would break them. If that is the case, and if they do suffer hardship in finding 40s, then my hon. Friend himself has made the strongest possible case for their inspection.

Mr. Williams: My hon. Friend misunderstands. Numbers of people keep boarding establishments for animals as sidelines. A man's wife may, perhaps, keep kennels for, say, half a dozen dogs. It could be a burden to her to have to pay 40s. as proposed in the Bill.

Mr. Burden: Now my hon. Friend is submitting that animal boarding establishments are kept as sidelines and not really as businesses. I wish he would make up his mind whether the keeping of an animal boarding establishment is a business or whether it is not.
Whether or not the animal boarding establishment is run as a sideline the person keeping it is dealing with animals which have feelings. My hon. Friend the Member for Exeter laughs. He appears to think it funny that animals should have feelings. That makes it all the more evident that I was quite right in writing off his speech by ascribing to it only one valuable piece of evidence, that the action of his own dog justifies the action proposed by the Bill.

Mr. Williams: My hon. Friend misunderstands again. I was laughing at him.

Mr. Burden: My hon. and learned Friend laboured the question of children and said that, although we were asking for these powers for the licensing of people who care for animals, people could send their children to boarding establishments which are not subject to such examination as we propose for animal boarding establishments. The answer to him is that parents and children would very quickly react if the children were not cared for properly.
Another argument against the Bill is that if the keepers of animal boarding establishments did not properly feed and water the animals left in their care, they would very soon be out of business. Hon. Gentlemen who take that line show an utter disregard and lack of knowledge of the treatment which is sometimes accorded to animals by people who profit by it. They should know that it is possible to send animals on a long sea journey, as has recently been done, without proper feeding, without proper watering and without proper accommodation.

Mr. Doughty: That observation is quite irrelevant to this Bill. Those animals are not sent in boarding establishments. Whether my hon. Friend be right or whether he be wrong, that question of the transport of animals is now the subject of an inquiry ordered by the Government. Is it right for him to prejudge the findings of that inquiry before he knows whether its findings will be in accordance with what he has stated. The matter is sub judice.

Mr. Burden: The Minister has already said that he is very greatly concerned by that question. I am merely reiterating what my right hon. Friend said. I am


surprised that my hon. and learned Friend should so readily spring to his feet with that suggestion, which would imply, of course, that he has very little concern for the feelings of animals. I am rather surprised at him.

Mr. Doughty: My hon. Friend has no business to say that at all. It is not a question of having no feelings for animals. I have not said anything of the sort. I said two things, and I remind him of what they were. They do not justify his remarks. The first was that what he said about the transport of animals had nothing to do with this Bill, which does not deal with the transport of animals. The second was that that question of the transport of animals is now sub judice.

Mr. Burden: I would remind my hon. and learned Friend that the question about the treatment of animals, the question of how they should be treated—because people profit by it—was raised by my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter. I feel myself to be on perfectly sound ground in rebutting those arguments against the Bill and in pointing out the evidence that is available at the moment. I would ask my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East not to become so testy. He is getting really very testy.

Mr. Doughty: I admit I was testy just now, but I was testy on that occasion only, and my hon. Friend will realise why I was. It was because he made an accusation against me that could not be founded upon my remarks. I reminded him of what those remarks were.

Mr. Burden: If I have misunderstood my hon. and learned Friend and have given offence, I of course apologise most sincerely.
Then it was said that the local authorities would be against the Bill because it would involve them in the cost of examining kennels and other animal boarding establishments, that they would not wish to do it, and that council meetings would be taken up in determining whether or not a boarding establishment should be licensed.
I would inform hon. Gentlemen of circumstances that arose in my own con-

stituency. Some boarding kennels had been established there for quite a considerable time. They were established long before the area in which they were sited was developed. Houses were built there afterwards. When that area had become more residential there were complaints that the animals were causing inconvenience to the residents. It was said that because of the area in which they were sited the kennels were causing a considerable amount of nuisance. Petitions were brought before the local council and a great amount of the council's time was taken up in deciding whether or not those kennels should he allowed to remain where they were or should be removed.
One of the advantages of this Bill is that it empowers local authorities to ensure that kennels are sited acceptably lo the local authorities, and then the owners or occupiers of the animal boarding establishments, provided they ensure that the regulations are kept, can be assured that they will have local authority support in carrying on their animal boarding establishments where they have been placed.
I would remind my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East that the Association of Municipal Corporations, speaking on behalf of the local authorities, welcomes the Bill It has said this of the Bill:
The Bill, which is due for Second Reading on Friday, 15th February, proposes the licensing by local authorities of boarding establishments for animals and closely follows the provisions of the Pet Animals Act. 1951. The Association is in favour of the introduction of this legislation, and I shall be grateful if you will, if possible, help to ensure that the Bill receives a Second Reading. The Association has a number of particular comments to make for improvement of certain of its provisions, but these do not take away from the general welcome which the Association gives to the Bill.
My hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey. East and my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter would be on much better ground if they were to give the Second Reading of the Bill their blessing and then, in Committee, to put forward Amendments to improve or to delete parts of it which they consider to be unnecessary or unwise.
Eminent members of the veterinary profession whom I have consulted generally


give the Bill a welcome. They consider it a wise precaution which is justified in present circumstances. Of course, they think—and I have no doubt my hon. and learned Friend the Joint Under-Secretary of State will have something to say about this—that the 15 quarantine kennels which are run by registered veterinary surgeons, and which are inspected, which are open to inspection by the Minister of Agriculture, Fisheries and Food, should not be interfered with. I think that we who have sponsored this Bill readily accept that there are some such small points which require further consideration. There are some difficulties, of course.
Here I can produce evidence which largely destroys the argument of my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter. I have received a report from my veterinary friends that one difficulty is that a great many people, because the boarding establishments are not registered, and because they are not under supervision, prefer, when they go away from home, to ask veterinary surgeons to board their animals, because they are sure that the animals will be really cared for by the veterinary surgeons.
Another point is that registered breeders accept some dogs for boarding. These are all matters which can be thrashed out in Committee and I hope that, having expressed his views so forcibly, my hon. and learned Friend the Member for Surrey, East, and my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter will assist us in making this a really good Bill and not do their utmost to destroy it at this stage.

12.30 p.m.

The Joint Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department (Mr. J. E. S. Simon): I should like to join in the congratulations to my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich (Mr. Ridsdale) on his good fortune in securing a place in the Ballot and on what seemed to me the excellent speech with which he introduced the Bill. Indeed, the debate generally has been a very useful one, with the arguments on each side put well, cogently and temperately.
The purposes which animated the promoters of the Bill will command general sympathy and assent, not least among those who have spoken against the Bill. It is intolerable that animals which have

been domesticated by man, which give him faithful service and devotion, and which perform such useful functions for him, should be, at the hand of man himself, the subject of neglect and suffering.
The welfare of animals has been for many years the subject of much legislative activity on the part of private Members. Indeed, this is a subject which is peculiarly suitable for private Members, because the emotions aroused by cruelty to animals are common to all Members of the House. Almost all the statutes on cruelty to animals originated in legislation initiated by private Members, and that includes the Protection of Animals Act, 1911, and several Acts which have amended that main Act, some quite recently, including, the Pet Animals Act, 1951, which was introduced by my hon. Friend the Member far Wembley, South (Mr. Russell).
There are also a number of other Acts dealing with particular problems. The hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen (Mr. Moyle) referred to the desirability of consolidating that legislation. I will certainly draw his observations to the attention of my noble and learned Friend, who is concerned with that aspect of legislation.
The fact that there has been this legislative activity and that the purposes which animate the Bill command general assent, does not mean that Parliament is prepared to look at animal welfare Bills uncritically. The number of Acts which have reached the Statute Book is small compared with the number of Bills introduced. The reason is a perfectly proper one. Strong as are the emotions aroused by any thought of the ill-treatment of animals, the House is not prepared to surrender its reason and judgment in this or any other matter. If draw attention to certain disadvantages in the Bill, the House will recognise that this is done for the purpose of assisting the House in arriving at a reasoned and balanced decision.
Reference has been made to a speech by my predecessor, the hon. Member for Lincoln (Mr. de Freitas) on the Pet Animals Act, 1951. It was described then and described again today as lukewarm and, on one occasion, as even refrigerating. I know that that was not


put forward as a serious criticism, because the House will recognise that the Home Office, of all Departments of State, is specially concerned with the liberty of the subject. That aspect must also be emphasised and the fact that it is put forward to the House does not denote any lack of sympathy with the aims of the promoter of the Bill and his supporters.
The Bill is concerned with people who, for gain and as a matter of business, provide accommodation for animals; and nobody has suggested today that there is anything discreditable in that. On the contrary, these people perform a useful service. That is not to say that it may not be, as any other useful service may be, the subject of abuse and that abuse in this sphere should not be the subject of scrutiny by the House.
As things stand, there are no restrictions on people who undertake this sort of business, except the restrictions imposed by the general law, which includes the Protection of Animals Act, 1911, and a corresponding Scottish Act, which make it a punishable offence to cause any unnecessary suffering to any domestic or captive animal by wantonly doing or unreasonably doing or omitting to do any act. That largely covers, though in general terms, the objectives which the promoters of the Bill have in mind.
I know that my hon. Friend the Member for Harwich and the hon. Member for Rossendale (Mr. Anthony Greenwood), and my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham (Mr. Burden) in a very effective speech, claimed that the general law is not sufficient. A similar claim was made when the 1951 Act was introduced. It can fairly be said, as it has been said, that to establish the commission of an offence under the 1911 Act it is necessary to prove to the court that suffering has occurred and that the aim, the very proper aim, of the supporters of the Bill is to ensure that public authorities may be in a position to step in where there is any neglect, or where there is risk of neglect, before the actual suffering occurs.
The Government accept that there is a substantial degree of truth in that fact. On the other hand, I must point out that the Bill would place onerous re-

strictions on people who keep animal boarding establishments. At present, they are free to carry out their occupations subject to the general law, including the Protection of Animals Act, but if the Bill were passed they would be able to carry out their occupation only by permission of the local authority and under conditions—

Mr. Burden: This is a rather important point. They will be able to carry on only under the authority of the local authority, but is it not true that if there is an objection to a boarding establishment on the grounds of inconvenience to other people in the area the local authority at present can bring pressure to bear through the courts because of nuisance and can have that boarding establishment closed down? That has happened in my constituency, whereas if the local authority has the power which the Bill proposes it will ensure that the establishments are so sited that they do not cause inconvenience, while giving security of tenure to the applicants.

Mr. Moyle: There is another aspect of the same point. The Under-Secretary said that these people could carry on their business only with the permission of the local authority. I do not read the Bill in that way. Their present right would remain intact. The only condition is that they must subscribe to certain conditions of the licence, laid down by the local authority in accordance with the Bill. Their right remains as intact under the Bill as it ever did.

Mr. Simon: May I reply, first, to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham. It is, of course true, and this a point that I have already made, that at present there is freedom to carry on these activities, subject to the general law, which includes the law of nuisance. Whereas now they can carry on their lawful avocations, subject only to the fact that they must not carry them on in such a way as to create a nuisance to their neighbours, under this Bill they can only do so if licensed, and that brings me to the point made by the hon. Member for Oldbury and Halesowen.
I think I am right in saying that these activities can only be carried on by permission of the local authority, because all these establishments under this Bill are only lawful if they are carried on under


the authority of a licence granted by the local authority.

Mr. Hayman: Mr. Hayman rose—

Mr. Simon: I will certainly give way later, but I think it may well be that I shall be answering the points proposed to be made in due course.
I have said that the local authority has a power under this Bill to licence, and the conditions which are set out and the fulfilment of which may be the subject of the licence, may involve a good deal of trouble and indeed of expense to the licence holder. I am not only referring to the 40s., but to the expense that would be caused in many cases in fulfilling the conditions laid down in the Bill.
Before agreeing to the imposition of such restrictions, the House would require to be satisfied that that course was justified. I think that that is so in the case of any infringement of a liberty which, up to now, has been enjoyed by Her Majesty's subjects. The Home Office has received no complaints from the public alleging unsatisfactory conditions in these boarding establishments. On the other hand, the House will have heard the evidence that was given by my hon. Friend in moving the Second Reading and also the cases given by the hon. Member for Rossendale and by other hon. Members who have spoken in support of the Bill.
That evidence has been offered to the Home Office before the debate this morning, but I am not in a position either to support or deny it, because there is simply no way of checking it. At the same time, it is produced by gentlemen who are experienced in obtaining and assessing evidence in this matter. This is a matter on which the House will have to make up its mind whether it is satisfied on the evidence that has been placed before it that a case does exist to justify the restrictive nature of the Measure which it is being asked to pass into law.
If the House decides to give the Bill a Second Reading, it is the view of the Government that the Bill provides an apt way of dealing with the problem, and that, subject to examination of its details, to which I will come in a moment, it would provide workable machinery for the object which my hon. Friend and other promoters of the Bill have in view. The licensing procedure is similar to that in the 1951 Act, and, as no complaints

have been received by the Home Office about the operation of that Act, I think it can be assumed that the Act is functioning smoothly.
My hon. Friend the Member for Gillingham gave examples of matters of detail which would need attention, and I would only refer to two matters which, though they are really matters for the Committee stage, might usefully be discussed at the moment. One of them was referred to by my hon. and learned Friend the Member for East Surrey (Mr. Doughty), and concerns the definition of animal as cat or dog, and, if the House decides to give the Bill a Second Reading, I agree that it might be a matter for scrutiny.
I could not help noticing that at the time monkeys were mentioned, the hon. Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. D. Jones) left the Chamber. I hope that it is not only in the North East coast area where the story is known which involves the history of the monkey washed up at The Hartlepools and which was immediately recognised as a Napoleonic spy. I think that there is a case, and the House might think there is a case for examining this, for seeing whether that definition may not be unduly restrictive, although I readily concede that the special problem is that of the cat or dog boarded out.
There is one other matter to which I should refer, and it is the definition of "officer" as
any person appearing to a local authority to be specially qualified by his character and experience to carry out the functions assigned;
I do not know whether that is intended to cover the officers of the various voluntary societies, but if it does it is a new principle, not only in this legislation, but in all types of legislation. Similar proposals have been made in similar Bills in the past, including the 1951 Bill when it was before the House, and they did not find favour with the House. That, however, is a Committee point, and if the Bill does receive a Second Reading now it will require to be covered.

Mr. Hayman: I am not sure, but I rather think that that point was discussed when the Protection of Birds Act was before the House, but perhaps that debate might be examined to see whether any reference to officers was made in it.

Mr. Simon: I am very much obliged to the hon. Gentleman, whose suggestion is a valuable one. If the Bill does receive a Second Reading, the point would undoubtedly be found to require scrutiny.
I have tried to balance the arguments, and the House will carefully examine the arguments which have been put very ably on both sides. If the House thinks that, on the evidence before it, there is a case for the Bill, I can undertake to give such help in Committee as I can to shape the Bill into a proper instrument to carry out the purposes which my hon. Friend and the other hon. Members who have spoken in support of it have in mind.

12.48 p.m.

Mr. Harold Gurden: I came here with an open mind, quite willing to be convinced either way about this Bill, but I do hope that the few visits that some of us make to the House on Fridays will not give the impression, which to some extent this Bill has given, that unnecessary laws can be brought into being because private Members are allowed to use Fridays for this purpose.
It appears to me that it is so easy now to be a breaker of the law. We have so many laws that it is impossible to know whether one is breaking the law or not. One has only to drive or walk outside this House half-a-mile and see many lawbreakers because of the thousands of pedestrian and traffic orders that are in existence. Now we are suggesting that we ought to have the same sort of thing in respect of people who look after animals.
I am an officer of a very strong branch of the R.S.P.C.A. As president of the Birmingham area branch, I would have thought that the Association would have made strong representations to me on this Bill if it had thought for a moment that it was necessary for the protection or the well-being of animals. The Association is diligent in looking into such matters, but I have heard nothing from it.

Mr. Hayman: If I may interrupt the hon. Gentleman, I will only say that from my experience—even though I am not an officer of the R.S.P.C.A.—when the time for the Ballot on Private Members' Bills came along I received a questionnaire, which I thought was general, asking whether I would be prepared to introduce

this Bill if I should be lucky in the Ballot.

Mr. Burden: My hon. Friend says that he has had no letters about the Bill, but I do not think that he would deny that the Rent Bill is an extremely controversial one. Will he say how many letters he has received about that one?

Mr. Gurden: I think that I have had about seven letters on the Rent Bill, some in favour and some against. I know that the Rent Bill would not put the animal lovers off writing to me. They are very strong in Birmingham on such matters and it surprises me that they have not written to me. I am not denying that hon. Members may have received some representations from animal lovers or, indeed, from the R.S.P.C.A., but it surprises me greatly that the Association has not seen fit to ask me to support the Bill if it thinks it necessary.

Mr. Ridsdale: May I remind my hon. Friend that the R.S.P.C.A. is fully behind the Bill?

Mr. Doughty: If the R.S.P.C.A. was fully behind the Bill, it could have addressed itself to private Members, and I have not heard from it.

Mr. Gurden: That is precisely my point, that in Birmingham there is a very strong branch of the R.S.P.C.A. I may not be doing it justice; it may have thought that I would automatically support the Bill.

Mr. Burden: I am sorry to intervene again, but there is an all-party animal welfare group and a notice was put on the Whip that it was meeting. The R.S.P.C.A. officials were there and they naturally assumed that those who would wish to speak on the Bill would come to the all-party meeting to hear the pros and cons of it.

Mr. Gurden: That may well be. I should make it clear that I am speaking for the Birmingham branch, which is a strong branch covering an area of well over 1 million people. While the representatives of the R.S.P.C.A. who came to the House may well have supported the Bill, it does not seem to me that the general body of members of the Birmingham branch are very worried about it. I am not suggesting that they would oppose the Bill; I am only saying


that they are not worried about it and do not think that it is necessary.
Furthermore, for my sins or otherwise, I was chairman of the Council of Birmingham's Markets and Fairs Committee, and there we have a large body of veterinary inspectors working for the corporation. Those inspectors were in the habit of inspecting the animal establishments in the city, particularly stables and riding schools. It was a well-known fact that the inspectors were so good at their job that they would report any cruelty or misdemeanour on the part of animal keepers. I was serving on that committee for nine or ten years, and never at any time do I remember a veterinary inspector reporting trouble from people who boarded animals. This also leads me to believe that there is no real necessity for the Bill.
Now I come to the other point about which I am unhappy but which possibly could be dealt with in Committee, that is the type of person who is willing to take in a neighbour's dogs or cats. I happen to make use of these people. It is of great concern to me that my animals should not only be well boarded and cared for, but happy. So I frequently take them to friends who keep a number of other animals. Some of these people are not always wealthy and I try to pay them generously, knowing that they are doing me a favour and will do it to the greatest advantage of the animal. As has been said earlier, such people do not provide elaborate boarding kennels. They take my dog into the house and see that it is happy with the other animals.
I am sure that this Bill will prevent me from taking my animals to be looked after to the best advantage, and this will apply to many thousands like me. I cannot imagine that these good people will run the risk of breaking the law. I cannot imagine that they will go to the local authority and pay 40s. and build kennels.

Mr. Dudley Williams: If I may interrupt my hon. Friend, I think he realises that I am absolutely in agreement with what he is saying. May I point out that those unfortunate friends of his will also be subject, if this Bill becomes law, to a fine of £25 or a term in prison not exceeding three months?

Mr. Gurden: I thank my hon. Friend for pointing that out, because it is concerning me greatly.

Mr. Ridsdale: I can assure my hon. Friend that the points he has raised will be dealt with sympathetically during the Committee stage. It is a matter of being tolerant in these cases. We want to be sure that people are not keeping the kind of boarding establishments of which we have heard from the R.S.P.C.A., which are very bad indeed.

Mr. Gurden: I thank my hon. Friend for that interruption, because it is encouraging to know that if this Bill should receive a Second Reading we should be able to make useful Amendments to it.
Continuing on that point, may I refer to my hon. Friend's statement that other animals may have to be brought in? That concerns me even more, because my children's ponies are in the care of a neighbouring farmer. We are happy about the arrangement, but I am sure that it would not pass the local authority. That farmer would not allow me to put my animals into his field if he had to get a licence and have a veterinary inspector examining the place. There are also the penalties, which have been referred to, if he should be in breach of this Measure.
On the whole, I feel that this is one of those cases where there may well be a reason for looking into the position further, for having a full investigation made over a period of twelve months by local authorities who have veterinary inspectors, afterwards telling us the facts in the case and whether or not such a law is really necessary. As I said earlier, I do not think we should use Fridays to bring in laws which we could well do without.
Finally, no one should interpret my remarks to mean that I do not wish to do everything possible for the welfare of animals. I should be shot at in Birmingham by the R.S.P.C.A. members if they thought for one moment that I had missed doing something which I could have done today for the benefit of animals. However, I have yet to be convinced that the Bill would serve any useful purpose. I throw out the suggestion, for what it is worth, that a long-term investigation should be carried out to ascertain whether or not it is necessary.

Question put, That the Bill be now read a Second time:—

Bill accordingly, read a Second time.

The House divided: Ayes 45, Noes 5.

Division No. 63.]
AYES
[1.2 p.m.


Agnew, Sir Peter
Hall, Rt. Hn. Glenvil (Colne Valley)
Neave, Airey


Benson, G.
Harvey, John (Walthamstow, E.)
Partridge, E.


Beswick, Frank
Hayman, F. H.
Pitman, I. J.


Body, R. F.
Hughes, Emrys (S. Ayrshire)
Redmayne, M.


Braine, B. R.
Hughes-Young, M. H. C.
Robertson, Sir David


Brooman-White, R. C.
Hunter, A. E.
Rogers, George (Kensington, N.)


Brown, Rt. Hon. George (Belper)
Hynd, H. (Accrington)
Sparks, J. A.


Bryan, P.
Johnson, James (Rugby)
Taylor, John (West Lothian)


Bullus, Wing Commander E. E.
Jones, David (The Hartlepools)
Thompson, Lt.-Cdr.R.(Croydon, S.)


Burden, F. F. A.
Keegan, D.
Wigg, George


Campbell, Sir David
Lagden, G. W.
Willey, Frederick


Cunningham, Knox
Lipton, Marcus
Williams, W. R. (Openshaw)


Grant-Ferris, Wg. Cdr. R.(Nantwich)
Lloyd, Maj. Sir Guy (Renfrew, E.)
Younger, Rt. Hon. K.


Greenwood, Anthony
MacPherson, Malcolm (Stirling)



Gresham Cooke, R.
Mikardo, Ian
TELLERS FOR THE AYES:


Griffiths, Rt. Hon. James (Lianelly)
Mitchison, G. R.
Mr. Ridsdale and Mr. Russell




NOES


Gibson-Watt, D.
Pott, H. P.
TELLERS FOR THE NOES:


Gurden, Harold
Spens, Rt. Hn. Sir P. (Kens'gt'n, S.)
Mr. Doughty and Mr. Dudley Williams.


Hinchingbrooke, Viscount

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 38 (Committal of Bills).

LOCAL GOVERNMENT (PROMOTION OF BILLS) BILL

Order for Second Reading read.

1.9 p.m.

Wing Commander Eric Bullus: I beg to move, That the Bill be now read a Second time.
In legislation at present before Parliament considerable emphasis appears to be on local government. It would appear opportune, consequently, to do a little tidying up of earlier local government legislation even in a Private Member's Bill.
The Bill seeks to dispense with the necessity for a borough or urban district council to hold a town's meeting, and, if demanded, a local poll, before it can promote a Bill. By the use of the word "borough", I include the twenty-eight Metropolitan boroughs. The provision for the calling of a town's meeting is a handicap which was placed on boroughs as long ago as 1872. The law is now contained in three Acts which are set out in Clause 1. They are: the Local Government Act, 1933, Section 255 and the Ninth Schedule: the London Government Act, 1939; and the London County Council (General Powers) Act, 1948.
I recognise that these proposals are not without controversy. Indeed, the National Chamber of Trade, of which I have the honour to be a vice-president, the British Hotel and Restaurants Association, and the Theatres National Committee, and no doubt others, are opposed to the Bill. But there is powerful support from other bodies. Three important independent commissions have recommended these proposals. The Association of Municipal Corporations, to which I am grateful for the drafting of the Bill and which represents practically all the boroughs and county boroughs in England and Wales, is a strong supporter: the Urban District Councils Association supports the Bill, and there are many hon. Members on both sides of the House, including the weight of the Front Bench, or at least the benevolent neutrality of the Government Front Bench, in support.
One of the strongest arguments for the Bill is the fact that existing requirements do not apply to county councils or

rural district councils. They can promote Bills without this requirement. Hence there is a genuine desire for uniformity in these local government requirements and the righting of an obvious anomaly.

Mr. H. Hynd: Is it not even more of an anomaly that the county borough is not so required?

Wing Commander Bullus: I am grateful to the hon. Member. The distinction between an urban district and a county borough and a rural district and a county council appears to be due to an historical accident, because when the Borough Funds Act, 1872, first required the consent of owners and ratepayers to the promotion of a Bill by a borough, county councils did not exist. I have done a little research into local government, and I have found that when county councils were constituted—

Mr. W. R. Williams: I think there is an inaccuracy in what my hon. Friend the Member for Accrington (Mr. H. Hynd) said about county boroughs. For the sake of the record, we ought to put it right. The position, as I understand it, is that these provisions do not apply to a Bill promoted by the council of a borough for the purpose of constituting the borough as a county borough or extending the county borough.

Wing Commander Bullus: It is true that Leeds Corporation, which is a county borough, had to go through these provisions of holding a town's meeting.

Mr. Williams: I am in favour of the Bill.

Wing Commander Bullus: In my researches I found that when county councils were constituted in 1888 they were not given power to promote Bills, but when that power was given to them some 15 years later, in 1903, there was no requirement that they should obtain the consent of the ratepayers. Similarly, when in 1929 rural district councils were given powers to promote Bills, Parliament expressly enacted by Section 55 of the Local Government Act of that year that those councils should not have to obtain the consent of their local government electors to the promotion of a Bill.
That peculiar situation, created in 1929, remains today. Two types of local authority must obtain the consent of their electors at a town's meeting, perhaps by a town's poll, before they can come to Parliament for a Bill, while the other two types are not under any obligation to do that. The Bill seeks to remove a handicap and remedy an obvious injustice. I can trace no dispute which has arisen in the case of a county council or a rural district council because of the freedom of those authorities from the necessity of having a town's meeting or a town's poll. I am certain that this is because of the other provisions of the existing law, which will remain in full force and effect if the Bill is accepted.
That is because over-riding all these provisions is the fact that any Bill is subject to the vigilance of Parliament. Perhaps I can give a practical example of the vigilance of Parliament. I hope that hon. Members opposite will not think that I am trying to score a party point. I am using it as an example. When Leeds Council, dominated by a Socialist majority, introduced a Bill, there was some Clauses which offended the Tory minority and the council had to have a town's meeting; but the Bill was still carried and it was actually in the House that the offending four Clauses were thrown out by the Tory majority here, I am not trying to make a party point, because it could well have been the other way about. I want to show that Parliament itself can be vigilant and do exactly what the town's meeting in Leeds could not do.
The provisions which will still remain are not affected by the Bill—advertising of a local authority's intention to promote a Bill, followed by a favourable vote at special council meetings on two occasions, and the approval of the Minister. Outside London, that is required by Section 254 of the Local Government Act, 1933, and similar provisions for London are in Section 151 of the Local Government Act, 1939, and Section 47 of the London County Council (General Powers) Act, 1948.
Those Sections provide every opportunity for local government electors to express to the local authority and the Minister their views on any proposals for the promotion of a Bill by a local

authority. Even after that, they can, of course, as so many do, always come to their Member of Parliament. Further, the Standing Orders of Parliament require full notice to be advertised locally of the matters proposed to be dealt with by the Bill and the notice must state when the Bill can be inspected and where copies can be obtained.
It will thus be seen that these provisions give a local government elector full opportunity to communicate with his representative on the council and his representative in Parliament. He also has the statutory right, if he so desires, to inform the Minister of Housing and Local Government if he objects to the Bill, and the Minister can deal with Any such objection in his report on the Bill to Parliament. Of course, apart from those provisions there is the additional necessity of satisfying Parliament that the proposed Bill ought to be passed into law.
I can give what I consider to be a pertinent example of that. I can give an up-to-date illustration of the practical absurdity of the requirement to hold the town's meeting. In the city of Plymouth, a Bill is being promoted in this Session jointly by the Plymouth Corporation and the Cornwall County Council in order to obtain powers to construct a bridge over the River Tamar. The borough council and the county council are equal partners in promoting the Bill and will be equal partners in constructing the bridge. Nevertheless, the borough council has to go through the procedure of a town's meeting, whereas the county council is free from that obligation.
It is not only to bring about uniformity in the promotion of Bills by local authorities that the Bill is submitted. It is also to do away with the difficulties encountered by boroughs and urban district councils under the present procedure. The council of a borough can never obtain the approval of the electors, or even a majority of a town's meeting, because there is no hall in any borough big enough to accommodate all the electors. At the most the council gets the approval of only those few who attend the public meeting, or who take the trouble to vote, and those few cannot claim to be regarded as representing all the electors, whereas the council, which is elected by the electors, can justifiably


claim to be properly representative of local opinion. At most, those who attend can be said to have taken the trouble to do so, and that may be caused by a special interest which is not necessarily as great as the public good.
If a poll is demanded either by the council or by 100 electors, it has to be taken by reference to the resolutions proposed at the public meeting, whether passed or rejected. The mayor or any other persons presiding will indicate whether he proposes to have a single resolution in favour of the whole Bill, or separate resolutions in favour of different Parts or Clauses, but the ultimate decision rests with the meeting, which may—and sometimes does— require a dozen or more resolutions.
The form of voting paper is prescribed by Regulations of the Ministry, which require that each resolution shall be put as a separate question. I have with me a typical ballot paper containing six questions which were actually put at a poll on the Birmingham Corporation Bill. 1954. The voting paper had to be marked with a cross according to whether the voter voted for or against the resolution.
Of course, there may be a dozen or more questions on this type of paper. I suggest that such a voting paper is not a fair way of deciding an issue which may he of great local importance. In this respect, I may be allowed to read one of the six resolutions which appeared on the Birmingham Corporation Bill poll. The first resolution said:
That the Electors of the City of Birmingham hereby approve the promotion by the Council of that City of Clause 14 (As to purchase of land for purposes relating to redevelopment of areas of bad layout and obsolete development) of the Birmingham Corporation Bill, 1954, together with so much of the preamble and of the other Parts of the Bill as relates or is ancillary to that Clause.
I think that speaks for itself.
When a Bill is promoted by a council, the council always has the help of its professional advisers, the town clerk, medical officer of health, treasurer, surveyors and others and, when necessary, further advice from experts. It seems quite wrong that the decision of the duly elected representatives as to what is best for the town—arrived at after full discussion and after obtaining all necessary advice—should be overruled by a com-

paratively few electors, who have no such advice and cannot claim to represent the whole of the electors.
The cost of having a poll may be very heavy. Polling stations have to be provided and fitted up. Presiding and other officers have to he appointed and to be paid. Notices have to be printed and posted. The cost may amount to £3,000, or even more. I will quote from the evidence of the Joint Committee on Private Bill Procedure, H.C. 139, page 294:
During the last twenty years the attendances at public meetings of local government electors in Manchester in connection with Bills of the Manchester Corporation has varied from 800 to 20 out of an electorate varying from 498,000 to 345,000. Polls were taken on three Bills and the vote represented as a percentage was in one case 15 per cent. and in the other two cases 5 per cent. of the electorate.
The Report goes on to say:
The cost of the poll per vote ranged front 9d. to 2s. 11d. Compared with this the voting at the municipal elections in the same three years as the polls were taken varied from 39 per cent. to 44 per cent. of the electorate.
I think hon. Members will agree that those figures are very striking.
I need not again remind the House that the promotion of a Bill by a local authority is merely a submission to Parliament that certain matters should be enacted, but before Parliament comes to a decision the subject is considered in great detail in a Committee of each House and by the Government Departments concerned. Also, of course, a number of Members of Parliament consider Private Bills in detail and call attention to provisions which they feel are open to objection. In other words, Parliament itself, as I have tried to demonstrate, is able to look after the interests of those who wish to object to the proposals of a borough or urban district council and that to retain the towns meeting in a borough or urban district is quite out of date.
I wish to draw the attention of the House to the views which have been expressed by three important tribunals upon the proposals contained in my Bill. The Royal Commission on Local Government in 1929 had substantial evidence on this matter. In its final Report it said that in its view borough councils and urban district councils had made a case for the repeal of the requirements of that Act in relation to meetings


Of electors and polls. Most of the recommendations of that Commission requiring legislation have already been carried into effect. If this recommendation had also been adopted many thousands of pounds of ratepayers' money would have been saved.
The subject was again considered by the Local Government and Public Health Consolidation Committee, at whose instance the Bill for the Local Government Act, 1939, was drafted. That Committee was of the opinion that the repeal of these provisions was a matter beyond its terms of reference, but it added that it was entirely in favour of the recommendation of the Royal Commission. Clearly, had it been within its terms of reference to do so, it would have recommended again the repeal of those provisions.
Finally the matter was considered again by the Joint Committee of the House of Commons on Private Bill Procedure which reported in May, 1955, on the subject of Private Bill legislation—H. L. 58; H. C. 139. The Joint Committee had before it a great deal of evidence on this subject. It said that it concurred with the views of the Royal Commission and of the Consolidation Committee and accordingly, recommended that legislation should be introduced to abolish towns' meetings and towns' polls.
To summarise the arguments I have tried to make in favour of the passage of this Bill: The requirements as to towns' meetings and polls are inconsistent because they do not apply to all types of local authority. Secondly, full publicity is secured by other enactments which will not be affected by this Bill. Thirdly, the provisions proposed to be repealed fail in their purpose because of the impossibility of containing at a towns' meeting all the local government electors and the decision of the comparatively few who attend and vote cannot be taken as representing the views of all the electors. Nor is it possible for the voters to appreciate fully the effect and desirability of the proposals by a form of question and answer. The cost of this procedure may be very heavy, and its repeal has been recommended by three independent and important tribunals. Lastly, overriding all, is the work which is done in this

House in safeguarding the interests of all concerned.

1.28 p.m.

Mr. David Jones: I beg to second the Motion.
I believe that the case for this Bill and for the abolition of the town meeting and town poll has been amply made. I do not want to cover any of the ground which has been already covered by the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North (Wing-Commander Bullus). One is impressed when looking at the ballot paper of the poll which was taken in Birmingham on the 1954 Bill.
I submit that we cannot operate the provisions of the present legislation properly. The hon. and gallant Member pointed out that it is impossible to do so. I wish to quote an example from my constituency, because I know that constituency better than anywhere else. On the local government register of West Hartlepool County Borough there are 49,000 electors. The largest hall in the town holds just under 1,000 people.
Therefore, if it were necessary to convene a town's meeting in that town, only one in 50 of the electors could be admitted to the meeting. One presumes that if there were interested groups in the town wildly enthusiastic in favour of the provisions, or enthusiastically opposed to them, all they would have to do would be to get to the meeting place half an hour before the advertised time of starting, pack the hall, prevent the remainder of the electors from gaining admission and secure their way. In these circumstances, I suggest that it is possible to operate this legislation only because, in fact, most of the electors do not attend. In other words, it is operated more in the breach than in the observance.
If one takes the other part of my constituency, which is a small borough of 19,000 inhabitants with an electoral roll of nearly 11,000, the biggest hall in that town holds only 1,500 people. That means that, even in that case, if it were necessary to hold a town meeting it would not be possible to carry out the provisions of the legislation because, in fact, the hall could not accommodate the necessary numbers. As I say, the hall would be packed by the people who were either enthusiastically for or against the provision.
I do not want to waste the time of the House by reading from the Birmingham Corporation Bill ballot of 1954, but I would suggest that the proportion of voters would not be nearly so high in Birmingham as it was in Lewisham yesterday if the voters had to examine a document of this kind before deciding whether to vote for or against. How is it possible for the average local authority elector in any town or urban district in the country to be thoroughly conversant with all the implications involved in, for example, the first question read out by the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North?
Then there are the five other resolutions of the same kind which, apparently, every elector is expected to read and to come to a reasonable conclusion about and then to record in the two columns at the end of the paper whether he is for or against. I suggest that in these times that does not represent modern thought concerning the way in which these things should be done.
It is not without interest to recall, in connection with Bills which have been promoted by the Manchester City Council over the years, that in one case, as the hon. and gallant Gentleman pointed out, the Council succeeded in getting 15 per cent. of the electors to record their votes. In two other cases the number represented 5·3 and 5·2 per cent. respectively. The interesting thing about the last poll in which 5·2 per cent. of the electors recorded their votes was that the total cost of conducting that poll was £3,707, or, in other words, that the vote of each elector who took the opportunity of going to the poll cost the Manchester City Council almost 3s.
The British Hotels and Restaurants Association and the Theatres National Committee have written to me, pointing out that if this procedure were abolished through this Bill becoming law it would be extremely difficult for them to make their feelings known if they were against any provision which any borough council or urban district council in the country desired to put forward. They go on to say that as long as there has to be a town meeting and a poll—one appreciates immediately, of course, that if there is a small body of opinion in a town which is violently opposed to a provision in a Bill it has to get the objection of only 100 electors—it is easy to see how

a Bill could be demanded by 100 people even in a town with a population of 72,000, or a town such as the one to which I have referred in my constituency, with 49,000 electors.
Those bodies go on to say that if these provisions were abolished it would cost them a good deal of money to carry their objections to this House. With all respect, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, I suggest that you, more than anybody here, appreciates that fact at this moment because of what happened earlier this week We saw how easy it is for a single hon. Member to hold up any Private Bill. I am quite sure, Mr. Deputy-Speaker, that you appreciate that more than anybody else, including the Government Front Bench. I should have thought that that safeguard in itself provided the opportunity for having the matter examined on the Floor of the House.
I am sorry that the hon. Member for Eastbourne (Sir C. Taylor) is not present this afternoon, because I am quite sure that if the British Hotels and Restaurants Association objected to any power sought by a borough or urban district in the country he would see to it that that Association's point of view was put before the House. I make no complaint about that. Indeed, I think that is the proper way to do it. It would certainly be more real to do it in that way than by means of a town meeting or a town poll.
What applies to the body to which I have been referring applies equally to the Theatres National Committee. I have not the slightest doubt that that body could get the matter raised and that, in due course, we should have a Second Reading debate. I recollect having on one occasion to move the Second Reading of an amalgamation Bill, when the whole of the facts were made public.
All we propose to do by this Bill is to abolish the town meeting and the necessity for a poll. Section 254 of the Local Government Act, 1933, remains and all its provisions still apply. That means, even when this Bill becomes law as I hope it will, that before an authority can proceed with a Bill, the resolution in favour of its promotion must be passed by two meetings of the authority concerned and that at each of the meetings there must be an absolute majority, not of the number of members present at the


meeting, but of the total membership of the council. Ten days' notice of the meeting must be given and advertised in the local Press and the resolution to promote the Bill must also be advertised in the local Press.
Also, it is competent for a single elector who disagrees with the decision of the council to proceed with the Bill to write to the Minister of Housing and Local Government, voicing his objections. If the Minister feels that the objections submitted to him in writing by an elector are valid ones, he is entitled to include that fact in the report which he submits to Parliament on the provisions of the Bill.
In those circumstances, therefore, I suggest that the rights of every elector are safeguarded. All he has to do is to satisfy the Minister that the objections which he has are valid, and then the Select Committee which examines the Bill must have those objections before it and take them into consideration. I suggest, therefore, that the rights of every elector are safeguarded.
One of the most important things about this Bill is the fact, which has been brought out quite plainly, that three Committees of this House—one in 1929, another in 1932–33 and another as recently as 1955—all recommended that these provisions ought to be abolished. May I remind the House that, yesterday, the Home Secretary and Leader of the House, dealing with the Joint Committee on Private Bill procedure, read out a number of recommendations of that Committee which had been approved? If I remember rightly, he said that there were seven. I presume that this is one of them. It seems to me that we could very well reduce that number from seven to six by giving a Second Reading to this Bill and carry out the proposal that we should abolish the necessity for it.
I do not wish to weary the House with the history of this matter, except to say that although it was re-enacted in the Local Government Act, 1933, it found its origin in the Boroughs Funds Act of 1872. The Local Government Act of 1888 gave county councils authority to oppose Bills, but not to promote them. In 1903, the county councils were given authority to promote Bills in Parliament without the necessity for a town meeting

or for taking a poll. That applies to rural district councils as well.
I cannot for the life of me see why it should be competent for a county council or a rural district council to be authorised to promote Bills in Parliament without the necessity for that, and to impose this obligation on county borough councils, borough councils and urban district councils. I should have thought this was one of the cases where we could treat local authorities in any category in exactly the same manner.
I commend to the House the words of the Minister of Housing and Local Government when, on 12th February, he said:
Our aim is to foster and stimulate a vigorous and independent local government, and to give members of councils a greater incentive to take a lively interest in their local expenditure by placing much more of it under their own control."—[OFFICIAL REPORT, 12th February, 1957; Vol. 564. c. 1083.]
It is not much use giving municipalities control of their own expenditure unless we give them reasonable opportunity to promote Bills which they feel are in the interests of the districts which they serve.

1.44 p.m.

Vice-Admiral John Hughes Hallett: Like the hon. Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. D. Jones). I must say that after studying the correspondence I have had on this Bill I am by no means clear about the exact basis on which it is being proposed. It is not a matter on which I felt strongly originally, and I had not intended to take part in these discussions. But I was influenced by reading one of the letters which I received from an organisation similar to the organisations mentioned by the hon. Member for The Hartlepools, except that in this case it was a motoring organisation.
In the course of the arguments deployed against the Bill, the organisation based its disapproval on the
proposed repeal of this democratic safeguard.
I challenge the use of the word "democratic." After all, councils are elected on the basis of universal suffrage. What could be more democratic, therefore, than the present procedure whereby Bills are promoted, in as much, as has been pointed out, that they require two absolute majorities on the council before


they can come to this House at all? Goodness knows, when a Private Bill does arrive here, it is vulnerable enough. Later in the same letter I found the statement that if the Bill were passed it would remove a simple means of objecting to
a proposition which might he contrary to public interest.
I question the use of the word public "in this respect. I can see that it provides the simple means of opposing a Bill which infringes some special interest, but I am bound to say that the present procedure of the town poll appears to me to be very much more of a happy hunting ground for particular interests than a democratic safeguard. Indeed, it is a gift to the "pressure group," and it is often used as such. But before we get rid of a safeguard which has been in force for a great many years, we must ask ourselves why it was originally introduced and in what way have the circumstances changed.
As the hon. Member for The Hartlepools said, it originated in its present form in 1872. But I have been told—I cannot claim to be an expert in these matters—that the conception of a town poll dates back to much more ancient times, to the days when the local government of towns was not carried out by an elected body at all, but by a nominated body. One can see that in those days it was important to have some local safeguard against the promotion of Bills by a nominated authority before they reached Parliament at all.
There was a time when the ordinary individual, living some hundreds of miles away from London, would have had some difficulty, to begin with, in discovering when the King had summoned Parliament to meet. Having discovered that, he would have found it even more difficult and expensive to reach London, and, I should imagine, though the details of the procedure in this place are not too well known after all these years—that an ordinary citizen might have had some difficulty in gaining access to Parliament at all.
Even in 1872 the electorate was a very restricted one, and it is possible that some very important minority, possibly even the majority, of townspeople might have been gravely affected by some project of the corporation, and that not one of them was represented on the electorate

at all. Today that is all changed and, for the reasons which have been stated so clearly that I need not repeat them, there are ample democratic safeguards. For these reasons I conclude that the town poll is no longer either a necessary or, indeed, a proper way whereby the passage of a Private Bill should be obstructed or opposed.
At the same time we must recognise the genuineness of some of the fears which have been expressed by various groups and organisations. At the risk of introducing a note of party politics into the discussion, I will refer to what I think is a particular cause of apprehension, namely, the possibility of Bills reaching this House, and being passed, which authorise municipal trading in one form or another. Hon. Members opposite know that we on this side of the House, and an enormous number of small shopkeepers, are strongly opposed to any development or expansion in the practice of municipal trading.

Mr. D. Jones: Does the hon. and gallant Gentleman realise that in the Leeds Bill, to which the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North (Wing-Commander Bullus) referred, it was purely on a question of municipal trading that the Clause was rejected, so there is a safeguard in this House?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I am aware of that. Although I was not in the Chamber when my hon. and gallant Friend developed that part of his speech. I had prior knowledge that he intended to refer to that incident. I wanted to answer the argument in rather a different way. I confess that I speak as one who is very strongly opposed to any extension of municipal trading. What I question is whether this safeguard either can or should stand in the way of some hypothetical Measure. To begin with, it is perfectly obvious that no Private Bill which authorised municipal trading on a large scale would have a chance of geting through this House as long as there was a majority of hon. Members who were opposed to municipal trading.
If, on the other hand, we imagine at some future date a large Socialist majority in the House in favour of municipal trading—both hypothetical contingencies—I suggest that they would not rely on Private Bills to introduce it.


They would introduce a Public Bill to authorise it generally over the whole country. Therefore, I come back to the point that I do not think that this procedure is the appropriate one for blocking Private Bills. I suggest that it has outlived its usefulness.
Finally, I ask those of my hon. Friends —if there are any here—who oppose the Bill to be logical. If they favour a town poll before a Private Bill is introduced, surely they should favour a referendum of the whole electorate before the Government are authorised to introduce any public Bill

Sir Wavell Wakefield: Would not my hon. and gallant Friend agree that there is a common form of Private Bill and that frequently a local authority seeks to introduce a new Clause which may not be desirable? Is not this procedure of town meetings and polls admirable to enable people to express opposition to the introduction of a new or special Clause which, if introduced in one local authority Bill, would then create a precedent and be included automatically in all other Bills?

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: I appreciate that. It is indeed, the kernel of the opposition to the Bill. Nonetheless, I submit that the procedure before the Committee is a more effective safeguard. I am a comparatively new Member and I have served—if I may use the term—a sentence only twice on a Committee considering a corporation Bill: but nobody who has served on one of those Committees will deny for a moment the meticulous care with which the risk which my hon. Friend mentioned is guarded against, not only by the interested parties but also by the civil servants representing the Ministries concerned.

1.54 p.m.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: When I realised that the hon. Member for Hull, North (Mr. W. R. A. Hudson), who had won a place in the Ballot, had decided to introduce this Bill, I was pleased. As many of us know, this is not the first time that a Bill of this kind has been before the House but, unfortunately, so far a sufficient number of hon. Members have not been in its favour to ensure that it reached the Statute Book.
I listened with great interest to the hon. and gallant Gentleman the Member for Wembley, North (Wing-Commander Bullus) and to my hon. Friend the Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. D. Jones), and I think that the case they made for the Bill was overwhelming. It was one which every reasonable man or woman should support.
What we want to do here is really quite simple. We want to take from county boroughs, boroughs and urban districts the absolute obligation which now rests upon them to hold a town meeting and, if there should be a demand for it by only a very small minority of electors, a poll. It is immaterial whether the issues in the Bill which the council desires to promote have been canvassed for years in the locality as, more often than not, they have been. Normally, people in a town or an urban district are well aware months in advance what it is that their local authority wishes to do when it seeks powers from this House.
In spite of that, there is this obligation on a local authority, because long ago, as the hon. and gallant Member for Croydon, North-East (Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett) pointed out, it was essential that safeguards of this kind should be instituted as a protection for ratepayers. The need for this has long passed away and, in fact, the methods for putting it into operation cannot now properly be applied. The House would be doing itself justice if it accepted the Bill and took steps to see that it reaches the Statute Book at an early date.
The astonishing thing is that even those who are in favour of retaining these provisions think that 100 electors are enough to make a poll necessary. We have been given instances, and others could be given, where cities like Liverpool with an electorate of over half a million, have been put to the expense of holding what really amounts to a referendum of all local government electors because a mere hundred or so have demanded a poll.
It is a most expensive process to hold a referendum of this kind. It involves the setting up of polling booths, the appointment of presiding and other officers, the issuing of notices of various sorts, and also the printing of ballot papers which, more often than not, are lengthy, complicated documents. All this costs money.
As hon. Members have said, none of us would raise objection to this procedure if it really achieved the purpose for which it was originally designed, or even approximately achieved it. It is obvious, however, that more often than not the procedure is used as a device by a small minority of electors to ventilate a grievance which is not shared by the great majority of those who live in the locality.
It is physically impossible, in most towns, to find a hall large enough to take a modern electorate, or even a fair number of them and, even then, you can be by no means sure that the people there are entitled to vote and are local electors. Cases have been known in which a small minority, who felt very strongly on a particular subject about which its local authority desired to obtain powers from this House, have gone beyond the boundaries of the locality and have enlisted the help of outside supporters.
That is grossly unfair. It means that the ratepayers in that area have to foot the bill for the poll which has to be held. For these reasons, if for no others, we should hesitate long before deciding to oppose the Bill.
I saw recently a reference to the fact that not long ago, in Leicester, which has an electorate of about 200,000, a poll was demanded, but only about 1·4 per cent. of the people troubled to vote. The cost came, I believe, to between £1,500 and £2,000, which meant that every vote cost Leicester ratepayers 10s. That sort of thing ought not to be allowed to continue and the House should see to it that we so alter the law that it should not be within the power of a few people to put a great city to that expense.
It has been argued that as the 1933 Local Government Act was passed comparatively recently, when electorates were already large, those responsible for putting it on the Statute Book must have had that fact in mind. We ought not, therefore, it is said to tamper with legislation so recently agreed to. That Act, however, stems from the Borough Funds Act, 1872, as amended by the Act of 1903, which transferred the power to demand a poll to local government electors and took it from owners and ratepayers. It also made it impossible for opposition to depend upon one single person objecting and made it obligatory to have at least 100.

In these days of large electorates even 100 people are not enough to authorise the holding of a poll.
These earlier provisions were reenacted in the 1933 Act because the Chelmsford Committee, which reported in 1932, though definitely in favour of repeal, included it in its draft Bill in 1933, because it considered its terms of reference gave it no option. It agreed with repeal and with the recommendation of the Royal Commission which reported in 1928, upon which report an earlier Act of 1929 was founded. That Royal Commission believed that these provisions should be repealed.
Because, therefore, a Royal Commission and two Committees—one a Select Committee, which reported as recently as two years ago—have all declared in favour, after due consideration and the taking of evidence, that these provisions should be repealed, the time has, I think, come when the House should agree to their disappearance. Except for a few specialised interests not many people have made a request to hon. Members to oppose the Bill. I have received only one, from the Hotels and Restaurants Association. On the other hand, every local authority in my area has asked me to do all I can to put this reform on the Statute Book.
I therefore hope that at long last, thirty years after it was recommended by a Royal Commission, the House will today give this Bill a Second Reading.

2.7 p.m.

Mr. Dudley Williams: I rise to oppose the Bill because it takes away from local government electors powers that they should retain. Everyone knows that some local authorities try constantly to extend the area in which they can operate. Were we to give the Bill a Second Reading we should eventually find a spate of Bills promoted by local authorities to give them powers which many electors rightly think they should not have.
For example, we should see Bills put forward one after the other by boroughs and county boroughs to enable them to go in for municipal trading which would greatly interfere with the businesses of ratepayers in their areas. I am not in favour of taking away from sectional interests their powers of obstructing


legislation. A pamphlet has been distributed to hon. Members by the Association of Municipal Corporations and by the Urban District Councils' Association. I would like to make extensive quotations from it. I consider the pamphlet to be a thoroughly misleading document, and I am astonished that a body of the respectability of this Association sees fit to put such pressure upon Members of the House of Commons.
The opening words of the second paragraph state:
These provisions"—
that is, the power to demand a meeting and a poll by local electors—
do not apply in the case of a Bill promoted by a county council or a rural district council and it is not thought that in consequence thereof any mischief has resulted.
The right hon. Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) referred to this state of the law; but if there was anything wrong in the Bills promoted by areas controlled by rural district councils and county councils, surely the correct procedure would not be to take away the protection which ratepayers have in county boroughs and boroughs, but to introduce legislation to gain the same protection for ratepayers who live in the areas controlled by county councils and rural district councils.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: I am very interested in what the hon. Member is saying. If what he has now said is put forward as a serious suggestion, will he also indicate how there could be a town's meeting of a county council area?

Mr. Williams: I appreciate the manner of the right hon. Gentleman's intervention. Of course, the taking of the poll might be difficult and it might be necessary to take it by completely different means. It might be necessary to take it by post. All sorts of systems could be used in the scattered areas of a county council.
The fact is that the contentious legislation which I foresee if this Measure is passed into law is not likely to be introduced for areas controlled by county councils or rural district councils, because those are not the authorities who like to embark on such activities as municipal trading. They cannot trade, because their populations are too scattered. This

is a real protection for a certain section of ratepayers and it should be maintained.
I want next to refer to the criticisms which have been made of the power to call meetings. I refer to page xx of the Report of the Joint Committee on Private Bill Procedure, under the heading "Town meetings and polls." I am extremely surprised at some of the criticisms mentioned under that heading. The right hon. Member for Colne Valley mentioned, I believe, that no hall was large enough to hold a reasonable number of electors. The strange thing is that that paragraph 77 (b) states
That in any case only a very small proportion of the electorate did so attend.
One cannot have it both ways. Either one must complain that the halls are not big enough or that not enough people attend the meetings.
There is no legal compunction to hold the meetings in a hall. Use could be made of the local football ground or dog track, with loudspeakers. If the people of the borough concerned are so upset or feel so strongly about legislation proposed by their local authority, nothing would be easier than to go out to Highbury and have the meeting on the Arsenal football ground, or at the football ground or dog track in any area. That criticism of the present procedure is, therefore, a poor one.
I want to refer again to the criticism that few electors attend a meeting when one is called. It is a dangerous theory to suggest that because only a few people take advantage of their democratic rights to attend, the meeting is not a fair one. If we adopted that attitude, we would find ourselves driven inescapably to the conclusion that unless a certain proportion of the electorate vote at a general election, the election should be invalid. Such a suggestion would be monstrous. The fact that only a few people attend shows that the bulk of the people are not concerned whether the legislation should or should not be implemented, while those who do attend are really taking a serious interest. Those are the people whose will is to be counted.

Mr. D. Jones: Is the hon. Member arguing that if 5 per cent. of the electors of Manchester turn up at a meeting and record a decision against a project the


other 95 per cent. who are absent, presumably, because of their indifference, must accept the decision of the 5 per cent.?

Mr. Williams: The hon. Member is putting forward a most specious argument. The 95 per cent. who do not turn up have no interest in the legislation. Nobody can say whether they favour or oppose it. We might say that if everyone had voted in the Lewisham by-election the Conservative candidate would have been returned by a big majority, but we cannot say that.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: Would the hon. Member apply the same argument to last night's debate, when we were discussing the Rating and Valuation Bill and there was only the Minister and one other Member present on his side of the Committee?

Mr. Williams: What matters in a division, as the right hon. Gentleman, from his long experience, should know, is the number of people who decide to turn up and vote at the end.
To continue the argument about the weight to be attached to those who do not trouble at attend town meetings, we find the same state of affairs at company meetings. It is the people who turn up who decide whether the accounts should be passed and the directors elected. No one can say that because only five out of 200 shareholders turn up at a public company meeting, the directors should not be elected. It is the people who think and feel strongly about these things who attend. That applies in all phases of our democratic life, whether in local government, at a general election, or, indeed, in this House. It cannot be said that because 100 Members stay away from the House and do not vote, a resolution which is passed by the House is invalid. That is not the way we run our democratic life. It is the people who trouble to attend, to listen to the argument and to vote, who carry the day.

Mr. D. Jones: Is it not true that on the previous Bill, had the hon. Member got 45 others with him he would have prevented the Second Reading of the Bill and it would not matter to the other 500-odd Members, who would have to accept it?

Mr. Williams: That is true, but there is nothing wrong with it. We do not know how those who are not present today would have voted. There is no argument for saying that because only a limited number of people attend a meeting, the meeting is therefore unfair or should be invalidated.

Sir W. Wakefield: What about trade union branch meetings?

Mr. Williams: My hon. Friend has referred to what happens at trade union branches. Anyone who has attended knows what happens.
I am not a trade union member and have no personal interest, but I remember attending a union meeting in Coventry in about 1947 at which I was to speak. There were 200 members of the branch. I attended on the Thursday night to put the Conservative case. Of those who came to pay their dues, only 23 remained to take any interest in what was going on in the activities of the union. It was the day when they were to decide their policy on various matters and there was not the sightest doubt that 21 of the 23 were Communists.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: I do not know whether my hon. Friend is aware that the other day a branch of the Amalgamated Engineering Union had a secret ballet and only 7 per cent. of the members voted.

Mr. Williams: That bears out the argument I have been putting to the House, that much as we should like to see more people exercise their democratic rights, the fact that only a limited number exercise them is not a justification for abandoning democratic rights.
Further arguments listed in this Report against towns' meetings are extremely interesting. On page xx, paragraph (c) it is said:
That it was difficult to confine the attendance to electors.
that is, electors on the local roll. If there is to be a town's meeting it should not be difficult to check which of those coming to it are on the electoral roll. It should not be difficult to find out which of them are justified and which are not in voting.

Sir W. Wakefield: There can be control of public meetings as there is of a


meeting of a company in which there are many thousands of shareholders. The shareholders have forms which they show on going into the room where the meeting is to be held. Their names are entered in a list. The same sort of control is exercised when a trade union is taking a poll or having a meeting to which representatives come from all over the country. A trade union may hold a meeting of members coming from all over the country, but a town's meeting is for the people of one locality only, and so they are more easily identified, and that meeting is much easier to control. Is that not the case?

Mr. Williams: I wholly agree with my hon. Friend. I think that there should be no difficulty whatever in restricting entry to the meeting to people who are registered as electors in the area whose affairs are to be affected by the meeting.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: I thought the hon. Gentleman wanted to transfer these meetings to Wembley Stadium.

Mr. Williams: No. I do not think that that intervention by the right hon. Gentleman was worthy of him.

Sir W. Wakefield: At Lord's in my constituency, or at Twickenham or any such sports ground, there are turnstiles to control the admission of every individual seeking to enter.

Mr. W. R. Williams: How does a turnstile control anybody?

Mr. Williams: I cannot now deal with all the ways in which towns' meetings take place on or off football grounds. Personally I am not intimately concerned with the operation of football clubs, and I bow to the superior knowledge of the hon. Gentleman the Member for Openshaw (Mr. W. R. Williams), who says that turnstiles cannot control a crowd, and of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Sir W. Wakefield) who says they can.
I was about to reply to the right hon. Gentleman the Member for Colne Valley, who suggested I was advocating transferring these meetings to Wembley Stadium. I was not doing anything of the sort. I said that if in a borough there were no hall suitable for a town's meeting the local football ground, or some

such area, could be used instead. I am sorry if I misled the right hon. Gentleman, but I was not suggesting that every town's meeting should be held at Wembley Stadium.
We come to the next criticism of towns' meetings, which is reported in paragraph 77 (d). This is one of the strangest criticisms I have ever read:
That businesslike conduct of the meetings was difficult, and in many cases it was impossible to ascertain correctly the views of those present on the clauses and parts of Bills which had to be put somewhat arbitrarily to the meetings.
What a criticism that is of local authorities, that they cannot conduct public meetings. Of course there is no difficulty whatever in ascertaining the views of the people in the hall. There is no difficulty in keeping control of the meeting—not, that is, for competent people. I do not myself believe that these arguments are serious ones. Put as they are they do not reflect great credit on either the Association of Municipal Corporations or the local authorities who support it.
One of the last criticisms to which I shall refer, for there are other matters to which I want to come, is reported in sub-paragraph (e), and that is:
That it was possible for a powerful or wealthy organisation to create opposition to the proposals in the Bill, even though the feeling of the electors was in their favour.
What is wrong with people using their wealth to oppose a proposal which they think is wrong? If a local authority wanted to promote a Parliamentary Bill to make it illegal for any of its servants to be members of a trade union, would it not be proper for a wealthy trade union to oppose such a Bill? I should think nothing more proper could possibly be conceived. Of course there is nothing wrong in people using such money as they have to oppose a Bill which they think is opposed to their interests and is not generally in the interests of the ratepayers.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: What proposal is there in the Bill which would prevent such opposition from fructifying? Trade unions or any other groups who felt aggrieved could still petition against a Bill.

Mr. Williams: They could not command a poll. I am saying that that is one of the quickest ways to kill a Bill.
Of course, they could create a disturbance when the Bill reached Parliament: but I say that the people of the locality affected by the Bill themselves should have the opportunity to make their views felt at a meeting and at the poll consequent upon it.
There is a further criticism reported on the same page of the Report:
That the subject-matter of the poll was often incomprehensible to the ordinary elector.
That is a nice reflection on the people who send us here. The insinuation is made that the decision to be made is one which the people themselves are not competent to adjudicate upon.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: It is quite clear that the hon. Gentleman has never seen one of these ballot papers. Sometimes they run to almost eighteen inches in depth, and are most complicated, so complicated that it is difficult for the councillors to comprehend them, let alone the ordinary electors who have not seen the Bill.

Mr. Williams: I do not know what experience the right hon. Gentleman has had of these local polls, but I took part in one once, and I was, perhaps, to some extent instrumental in getting the Bill stopped. I will deal with that later, if the right hon. Gentleman will allow me.
The Report says:
That the promoter's opportunities for counter-propaganda were limited:
That the ballot papers, in the nature of the case, were both complicated and uninformative;
That in some cases electors had been subject to pressure to vote against all the proposals on the ballot paper in order to ensure the rejection of one.
All these criticisms are nothing less than insults to the intelligence of the people of this country. I do not think the people of this country are misled in this way. I believe that they are fully capable of making decisions when confronted with the ballot box for such purposes.
I now want to refer to some of the polls which have taken place in the last ten to twelve years. Thus I shall also be able to answer a question raised by the right hon. Gentleman. Before any suggestion is made that the people of this country should have rights taken from them one should find out whether their powers have been used reasonably in the

time in which they have had those powers. I shall go through all the cases since 1945. I am sorry to take up the time of the House like this, but I think that this is very important indeed, and that it must be considered before we decide that we can give this Bill a Second Reading.
On pages 168–9 of the Report of the Joint Committee on Private Bill Procedure hon. and right hon. Gentlemen will see a list of the town polls which have been held between 1945 and 1954. The first Bill referred to is a Bill promoted by the Portsmouth Corporation. The Bill authorised agreements between the Corporation and South Down Motor Services. It was not a Bill to which one could take very great exception. As a result, there was a large majority for it. There was a poll of 5·6 per cent. of the electorate and a majority for it of 6,000. It seems to me that that was a decision that was quite correct for the people of Portsmouth to take.
The next Measure was promoted by Felixstowe Urban District Council for the transfer of the Pier Company's pier to the Council. I think it is right to assume that the people of Felixstowe thought it wrong that a local authority should interfere with what was a private business. They voted against the Measure, and 46·5 per cent. of the electorate voted. I know of countless by-elections for local authorities where not so many people voted. Where is this business of always 2 per cent. or 3 per cent. carrying the day? In this instance, there was a narrow majority for throwing out the Bill.
In 1947–48 there was quite a number of Bills. The Beverley Corporation wanted power to develop surplus lands, and that was thrown out. The Birmingham Corporation wanted provision of furniture and power to provide municipal hotels. The two Clauses were thrown out of the Bill. The voters did not throw out the whole Bill, and I cannot understand the suggestion that the electorate are not sufficiently wise to decide.

Mr. Ian Mikardo: They were all right in North Lewisham.

Mr. Williams: The implication of an argument from the benches opposite was that the people of North Lewisham should not have had a Member elected at all because so many of them did not vote


that the election should have been invalid. That is a most strange interpretation of our general principles and methods of conducting our public life.
I now come to the Bill about which I was told by the right hon. Member for Colne Valley I knew nothing. It is a Bill which Coventry Corporation promoted in 1947. It was designed to provide,
Heating undertaking. Prohibition of smoke in certain areas. Power to provide concert halls. Power to provide entertainments etc. Wireless rediffusion. Power to provide municipal hotels. Power to provide and run motor hackney carriages. Collection and delivery of washing.
At that time I was the Conservative candidate for Coventry. and it was my first introduction to political life as a budding Member of Parliament. I must disappoint hon. Members opposite if they say that the people of Coventry had the good sense to reject me. Actually, the constituency disappeared under redistribution.
I well remember that this was a terrific battle. There was very strong feeling in Coventry, and not only among shopkeepers who were naturally upset that a considerable amount of their business was to be taken away from them and a local authority would have to provide the necessary buying and selling departments, and therefore there was no likelihood of these same people having their rates reduced after having their businesses nibbled away.

Mr. Mikardo: And their washing.

Mr. Williams: We had a pretty active campaign in the city, and there was very strong feeling. A total of about 21·5 per cent. of the electorate voted and there was a majority of 13,197 against the council's proposals. I do not know what has happened in Coventry since they were so unwise as to let me go, but I should be very suspicious of any statement to the effect that since I left the corporation has gone in for any of these activities.
The next Bill promoted in 1947–48 was that by Cromer Urban District Council for
dissolution of Commissioners for sea defences and transfer of their property (including the pier), powers and rights to the Council and various provisions relating to the pier.

One would not have thought that that was a contentious Measure, but it aroused a considerable amount of local interest and 37·8 per cent. of the electorate voted —not the 3 per cent. about which we keep hearing. They decided to register their votes either for or against, and there was substantial majority for the promotion of the Bill.
In the case of the last Bill for 1947–48, that promoted by Whitley Bay Corporation, there was an adverse vote against the whole Bill which sought to confer further powers on the council
in regard to the management and control of the foreshore, sea-shore, and the adjoining links and general powers as to streets, buildings, sewers, drains, infectious diseases, sanitary matters, food, public buildings, parks, cemeteries, provision of entertainment, acquisition, use and development of land.
I have no doubt that the people of Whitley Bay voted against the Measure because they felt that too much power was suddenly being given to the local authority. It was a very wide Bill indeed. Again there was not this very microscopic vote which is constantly alleged. About 11·8 per cent. of the electorate voted. I do not think that one can dismiss the whole subject by saying that no notice must be taken of the people because the poll was not nearer 100 per cent.
In the Barnsley Corporation Bill, in 1948–49, there was a Clause 5
To relieve the Corporation of the obligation to maintain, set apart and use part of the Harvey Institute as a public hall for public meetings.
Why should not the people of Barnsley have the right to the public hall for public meetings? They threw out this Clause. Again it will be noted that they did not throw out the whole Bill. Therefore, this idea that it is a complicated matter to vote in a poll on a Bill promoted by a local authority is not true. People are quite capable of voting against one Clause and accepting the rest of the Bill. I am surprised that anyone should seriously suggest, either in the Association of Municipal Corporations or in Parliament, that electors have not the intelligence to decide how they wish to vote.
In the case of the Crewe Corporation Bill, it was suggested that wireless rediffusion should be controlled by the Corporation which sought
power to establish a wireless station for reception and transmission of broadcasts, etc.


The electorate of Crewe were pretty quick to throw out this suggestion, and there was a substantial majority against it. I think it is quite undesirable that a local authority should have the powers to establish a wireless station and undertake wireless rediffusion.
In the case of the Grimsby Corporation, there was a demand for a Bill which it promoted in the 1948 Session of Parliament, and which received a substantial majority in its favour.

Mr. W. T. Proctor: On a point of order. The hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. D. Williams) is obviously reading out what has happened to Bills in the past. Is not that tedious repetition, as far as we are concerned? I submit that if such conduct took place in most of the places we are talking about, the meetings would never end.

Sir W. Wakefield: Further to that point of order. Before you came into the Chair, Mr. Speaker, reference had been made by previous speakers who were speaking in favour of this Bill, and, if I may say so, all these points now being raised in detail by my hon. Friend are in answer to the points made by other hon. Members prior to your resumption of the Chair.

Mr. Doughty: Further to that point of order. While it is certainly true, as the hon. Member said, that the percentage of people attending polls is a matter which has been very much stressed by those speaking in favour of this Bill, may I suggest that my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter is now submitting that those observations must have been somewhat inaccurate, and, therefore, as this Bill deals entirely with the numbers of people attending town meetings in regard to possible amending legislation, the illustrations quoted by my hon. Friend are relevant?

Mr. Speaker: I have heard nothing that is out of order.

Mr. Williams: This Bill promoted by the Grimsby Corporation did not raise deep feeling. I will not read out the whole Bill, though I would be willing—[Interruption.] Nothing could be further from my mind than the idea that I should occupy the House for the whole afternoon. [Interruption.] Well, I will read the whole Bill, if hon. Members wish.
The Bill regulated the position of the mayor, aldermen and burgesses of the borough, and it was really a technical Bill. There was nothing of tremendous importance to which one could take exception, except that it referred to the acquisition of land, which I understand was held for the benefit of the enrolled freemen of the borough. It was that point, I believe I am right in saying, which caused a certain amount of irritation locally. Is the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) saying that I am not correct? Would he like to rise?

Mr. Marcus Lipton: I want the hon. Member to sit down.

Mr. Williams: I think that is a most unkind remark.

Hon. Members: Withdraw.

Mr. Williams: Hon. Members have the right to give their views in this House. The electors send us here to maintain the rights which they have acquired over many centuries. I am a Member of the House of Commons, and I therefore look upon it as my right to maintain the rights of the electorate. That Bill was allowed to go forward, and there was a majority in favour of the Bill being allowed to go on.
The next Bill promoted was the Urmston Urban District Council Bill, which again got a vote in favour of the Bill being allowed to proceed to Parliament. The next Bill was not a highly contentious Bill promoted by the Leyton Corporation. It gave the corporation power to promote a heating undertaking, to run a window-cleaning service and various other activities, but it was looked upon as a very contentious Bill. There was a lot of feeling locally about it, and eventually there was an adverse vote of 279 against the Bill, some ten per cent. of the electorate voting.
The Aldershot Bill promoted in 1951, which was also supported, was a Bill to extend the borough. The Nottingham Corporation and the Birmingham Corporation Bills are the last two mentioned in the Report. The Nottingham Corporation Bill was turned down, while the Birmingham Corporation Bill, and this is a most significant thing, was the subject of objection on six Clauses. I will not weary the House by reading out all the six Clauses, but some of them were contentious without any doubt. There was


one question of creating a reserve fund for a restaurant, another one concerned an insurance fund, and another was concerned with power to nominate tenants of certain properties, presumably properties not controlled or owned by the Corporation.
There was very strong feeling about it, and I believe that my hon. Friend the Member for Selly Oak (Mr. Gurden), who so ably represents part of Birmingham, will confirm that there was considerable opposition locally to this Measure. Again, the people of Birmingham, in their wisdom, did not just cross out the whole Bill, but selected the Clauses which they wanted to eradicate from it. They did this in the case of five out of the six Clauses. In the third Clause, there were restrictions on the use of loudspeakers in the streets, and this they allowed to go through, which is a Clause which I would have supported. Nothing is more irritating than the row or racket that can be created outside one's house by someone who is advocating one policy or another. It is a technique which I do not use myself very largely, except at election time.

Mr. Harold Gurden: The point to remember here is that in that Bill the right to use loudspeakers in Birmingham was not taken away in the case of elections. One could still use loudspeakers even under the provisions of that proposed Bill for local government and for Parliamentary elections and such polls as those. It was to take away the nuisance value that the promoters had in mind, and my hon. Friend quite rightly said that that was a discerning poll taken in Birmingham.

Mr. Williams: I thank my hon. Friend for adding to the point which I made on the question of the use of loudspeakers. I think it is probably right that the power should be retained for election purposes only.
Now, I want to refer again to the pamphlet sent out by the Association of Municipal Corporations. Again, it refers in paragraph 5 to this question of public meetings and, speaking of the local authorities, says:
At the most, they only get the approval of those few who attend the public meeting or who take the trouble to vote.

Again, we have this strange theory that because only a few go to vote, therefore an election or decision under our democratic system should be invalid. I cannot understand it. Surely, the fact that some people vote and that the majority vote for a certain thing is a clear indication that many people feel strongly about certain Measures. Most of them feel one way or the other, and the fact that a tremendous number abstain because they do not care either way really has nothing to do with the matter at all.
As I have shown from the mention that I have made of the percentages of people attending meetings and voting in the polls on various Bills between the years 1948 and 1954, it is quite obvious that, in many cases when feelings have been strongly aroused, the polls have produced extremely high percentages, in all the circumstances, and in many cases considerably higher than many local councillors at by-elections obtain in order to sit on the council, though perhaps a little bit lower than in the case of by-elections for the House of Commons. In the past, however, people have got into the House of Commons on very low votes.

Mr. Lipton: Not many people had votes.

Mr. Williams: The hon. Gentleman makes very wild remarks. The percentage is the same whether only a few vote or a great many. The hon. Gentleman's observation is quite irrelevant.

Mr. Proctor: The hon. Gentleman said that people get in on a very low vote. In the days of the Rotten Boroughs very few people had votes, and a number of people got in on the vote of a very small percentage of the population.

Mr. Williams: But the percentage question is the same whether twenty people vote or 20,000 and the percentage in this case happened at by-elections in the past when party enthusiasm was not extremely strong.
There are other things in the leaflet sent out by the Association of Municipal Corporations which I do not like. In paragraph 6 they say:
What frequently happens at a public meeting is that if any provision of the Bill affects any particular class of persons either to their advantage or to their disadvantage those persons will attend in number …


What is wrong with that? I do not myself believe it is right that people who have a grievance, and who take the trouble to turn up at a public meeting, or take part in a public poll and decide that they do not wish to support a particular Measure, should be sneered at.

Mr. Julius Silverman: The point is not that they turn up but that, where there is only one public meeting, they pack the meeting, and the general ratepayers either do not attend or are excluded.

Mr. Williams: If the hon. Gentleman had been attending here diligently during the day he would have heard that point dealt with, but I will go back to the point I was making. I will go through it again so that the hon. Gentleman cannot miss it and then perhaps he will not have to intervene again. The fact is that in the Report, to which I feel I should again refer, and which I do not know whether the hon. Gentleman has read, there are criticisms of town meetings. On page 20, under paragraph 77 (a), they say that normally no hall could be found large enough for even a reasonable proportion of the town people, and that only a small proportion turn up.
If feeling is strong, the point I make in reply to the hon. Gentleman's criticism is that there is no need to have the meeting in a hall. It can be held on the local football ground or dog track. That was the point I made earlier, and I am sorry that his other duties could not allow the hon. Gentleman to get here to listen to me.
In paragraph 7 the Association makes the following strange remark:
The number of local government electors attending the public meeting must always be a very small percentage of the electorate"—
I do not understand that—
… and when a poll is taken very few take the trouble to vote.
I have already said that 37·8 have voted and anyone knows that 40 per cent. of the electorate voting means that feeling was very strong on this subject, so it is nonsense to say that these matters are settled by a group of people, congregated either in the local trade union headquarters or in the local headquarters of the chamber of commerce, deciding to rig an election. There is no truth in it. I see the hon. Member for Brixton rising. Does he want to intervene?

Mr. Lipton: No, I just want to go out of the Chamber.

Mr. Williams: Then do not let me detain the hon. Gentleman. My right hon. Friend the Member for Woodford (Sir W. Churchill) once fought an election on the slogan of "Trust the people." I am certain that the people are capable of exercising their votes in a proper manner on these issues, and it would be wrong for them to be deprived of their rights in the manner suggested in this Bill.
Now I come to the criticism that is sometimes made that if people disapprove of what the council is doing, they can vote against the council at the next municipal election. This is a strange theory. Local politics cannot be compared with the politics of the country. Here in the House of Commons we run the party system. I know that exists also to a great degree now in municipal and local government generally, but we stand as a body.
When Parliament dissolves, the great parties arrange their programmes and go to the public and get a vote on the proposed policies, but that does not happen in local government. One-third of the local government councillors retire every year, so there is a constant change-over, and it is unusual for the local councillor to put forward as part of his platform that he will promote a Bill in Parliament to introduce municipal trading. Indeed, there would be a row if he did so. I have never heard of a local government candidate for a council putting forward such a suggestion, but here we are different. We come in on definite policies. If people do not like the policies, they can vote against us. So I do not think there is a reasonable criticism against the rejection of the Bill on such grounds.
There is only one other matter to which I shall refer, and that is the suggestion made in some quarters that the Joint Committee on Private Bill Procedure was unanimous in deciding that the public meetings and the polls should be abandoned. It is true that this was one of the recommendations of the Joint Committee, but there was considerable feeling among certain of its members that this should not be done. On 3rd March, 1955, an Amendment to this proposal


was moved by my hon. Friend the Financial Secretary to the Treasury, and he was supported by the two other Conservative Members of the Committee present on that occasion, namely my hon. Friend the Member for Truro (Mr. G. Wilson), who much regrets that he is unable to be here today, and Colonel Lockwood, who is no longer a Member of this House.
The suggestion of this Amendment was that the town meeting should be abolished but that the right to a poll should be retained. Because that Amendment was defeated, the main recommendation that the polls and meetings should be abolished went through. It is my contention that when there is a strong minority feeling against such a proposal by a Joint Committee, it is undesirable for us in this House to ride over the feelings of those minorities and take away the rights that people have to polls that they have at the moment.
For those reasons, I hope that this House will decide not to give a Second Reading to the Bill.

2.59 p.m.

Mr. W. R. Williams: After that marathon speech by the hon. Member for Exeter (Mr. Dudley Williams), mine will appear a very puny effort, in time at any rate. The basis of the hon. Gentleman's speech was that we must be extremely democratic and do nothing to prevent the views of minorities being expressed and collected in one form or another. But what the hon. Gentleman has been doing seems to me to be the reverse of that, for he has monopolised practically an hour of our time, thereby denying a number of other hon. Members the opportunity to put their points of view. Like charity, democracy and democratic ideas should start at home.
People outside the House look upon it as a very bad thing that so much effort should be made in Parliament to filibuster on one issue in order to make sure that other people do not have a chance to bring forward their Bills. This is a private Members' day—

Mr. Dudley Williams: On a point of order. Is it in order, Mr. Speaker, for the hon. Member to accuse another hon. Member of deliberately wasting the time.of the House?

Mr. Speaker: I did not hear the hon. Member say that. Hon. Members should not, of course, impute unavowed motives to each other.

Mr. W. R. Williams: I accept what you say, Mr. Speaker, but I still think it is the view of most hon. Members present that a large amount of what was said by the hon. Member could have been put more concisely, thus giving other hon. Members more time to speak.
This is a private Members' day, and there are at least three hon. Members present who wish to bring before the House Bills which they think will be of interest to the House, to their constituents and to the country at large. It is very unfair that there should be an attempt deliberately to crowd out Bills which some hon. Members have been waiting a long time to bring before the House. I do not think it is in the interests of Parliament that that should happen, and I wish to protest against it, because it is happening time after time.
I thought that the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North (Wing Commander Bullus) moved the Second Reading of the Bill in a very moderate, comprehensive and concise manner. Whether or not one accepts all the views expressed by him, he is to be congratulated upon raising the issue, which is perturbing a large number of people and upon the reasonable and intelligent way in which he did it.
I admit I had some qualms about the Bill when it was first put forward. I am one of those who believe passionately that we should do nothing to hurt anyone in the country or to preclude people from expressing their views on matters of great public importance or on matters of importance to themselves. Throughout my trade union career I have believed that it is right that people belonging to an organisation should have the full rights of their membership to express themselves on all matters coming within the purview of the organisation.
However, we must come to the conclusion that there is a point beyond which it is unreasonable to go, even to safeguard the rights of an individual. In some respects, I might differ from most hon. Members on most things, but I think that it would be forcing the issue of democratic rights to an almost farcical


extent if we had to insist that on every little thing that takes place we must consult each person in either the association or our constituency. We are in danger of making the idea of democratic ways and means an oppressive thing instead of something that matters to society and to the individual.
I have been asked by the Manchester City Council to support the Bill because it is reasonable and practical. It is already clear that the provisions which we are seeking to alter do not apply to all authorities. They do not apply to county councils and rural district councils. People in the areas of those councils act in the usual democratic way by seeing their local councillor and discussing the matter with him. They may try to bring pressure to bear upon him. That is the democratic and open manner. If that is fair and democratic for those people in those areas, why does it become undemocratic in Manchester, Leeds, Birmingham, London, or anywhere else? We cannot have two forms of democracy, one for large conurbations and one for rural areas. No public mischief is done in those areas where these provisions do not apply.
There have been many suggestions that matters can be discussed intelligently at public meetings. If there were a public meeting at Highbury, or at Old Trafford, in Manchester, with 48,000 or 50,000 present, there would still be only 10 per cent. of the electors present. What serious consideration could they give to any of the matters in such a Bill? If we are to give people the right of discussion and examination, we must, at the same time, give them an opportunity rationally and reasonably to express their point of view at a well ordered, well arranged meeting. It is physically impossible in any large city to do that at a large public meeting.
What happens at these public meetings is not that there is consideration of a Bill, or of any of its Clauses or aspects. The people who are opposed to any part of the Bill, or to all of it, go to the meeting to record their votes. It can be reasonably assumed that most of the people in favour of the Bill, either in whole or in part, will not go because they believe that no useful purpose will be served by going.
On the grounds of practicability and reasonability, in these modern times, such a procedure has no advantage, whatever might have been the virtues in the old days, when there were no newspapers in daily circulation and when we did not have the radio and opportunities for members of local authorities precisely to indicate to their constituents what they had in mind. In the old days, fewer people were interested and affected and it was easier to deal with the pros and cons of a case at a public meeting. Although I want a completely democratic line to be taken in these matters, I believe that it is quite impracticable to follow the suggestion of the hon. Member for Exeter.
My next point emphasises something which has been said already. It is not as if this were just a whim of a few individuals or associations. This is the considered opinion of a large number of public-spirited people on local authorities who can see no reason for a tremendous waste of good money. For instance, I have been supplied with some statistics about attendances at towns' meetings in Manchester. In 1938, the number of electors was 354,549 and 200 people attended a meeting. In 1950, the electors numbered 490.936 and 600 attended a meeting. As recently as 1954 there were 485,541 electors and 400 attended a meeting.
No one in his senses would say that the practical result of such a meeting was any good at all to Manchester. It cannot be said that if 400 out of 485,000 say that they do not want a certain thing that is representative of the people in that large city.

Mr. Gresham Cooke: Is it not true that as a result of that meeting Manchester Corporation dropped the proposal it had made originally?

Mr. Williams: if it did, I think it did so on quite unreasonable grounds. I do not see anything sensible in taking the view of 400 out of 485,000 and regarding that as a representative view.
Take the statistics of the polls in Manchester. In 1938, the electorate was about 354,000 and the number of votes about 20,000. The percentage of the electorate was 5·3 per cent. In 1950, the electorate numbered 490,936 and the votes cast numbered 25,000, a percentage of the


electorate of 5·2 per cent. Is it not farcical? To hold that poll the Manchester Corporation had to spend well over £3,500. The cost of each vote was 3s. I do not mind if we pay 10s. for a vote if we get the views of the constituents on any subject, but it is farcical to think that we can reach the right conclusion about the future welfare of any city when only that percentage of the people takes an interest.
If Manchester dropped the Bill, as suggested by the hon. Member for Twickenham (Mr. Gresham Cooke), it is reasonable to assume that the people of Manchester knew from the Press, from the radio, from journals and pamphlets what the proposition was and, if they did not oppose it, they must be taken as being in favour. It is reasonable to assume that at least they did not feel sufficiently strongly about it to oppose those particular proposals. In the absence of that opposition it is not unreasonable, in these modern times, to accept that there was a measure of agreement, if there was not total agreement.
I do not believe that because a municipal association says something that must be taken as sacrosanct, but when all these municipalities join in saying a thing we ought to take some serious notice of the points they put before us. So far as I know not one body which represents local authorities does not take the view, expressed in this Bill, that we are wasting time by the present practice and getting very little in return for all the money and labour expended upon it.
Further, we have had the Royal Commission's Report. Personally, I had some very unfortunate results from Royal Commissions when I was in the Civil Service. Sometimes I think that they mangle a lot but bring forth very little clean linen: but, despite all that, I think that from such a Report we get a general consensus of opinion of people interested in these important matters. They have considered this and have come to the conclusion that it is no more necessary for this to apply in the boroughs to which I have referred than in the more rural and county authorities.
As far as I can see, there is one advantage, at least, in having the Bill. I do not think that any hon. Member present today would agree that the present situa-

tion is a satisfactory one. Whatever may be our view as to how we should conduct our business in the localities, I do not think that anyone would be satisfied with the figures I have given today and the cost involved in meeting the demands of the few. If, therefore, it is thought that the Bill goes too far, and that total abolition is not the right thing, we are surely still entitled to give it a Second Reading today so that, in Committee, we may go fully into some of these aspects. We can, perhaps, then amend it and make it a better Bill.
Broadly, however, I am in favour of the Bill as it is. It is a step forward towards bringing the conduct of affairs in our local authorities up to the requirements of modern times, and I shall support its Second Reading.

3.17 p.m.

Mr. Graham Page: The hon. Member for Openshaw (Mr. W. R. Williams) has put forward some strong arguments in his usual sincere, persuasive and fluent manner, but he has not made me personally enthusiastic for the Bill. In one part of his speech he referred to the present position whereby the public is well-informed by the newspapers and the wireless. Members of the public are not well-informed of the lost Clauses in a long Private Bill of a local corporation, and it is just these town meetings which bring those to the fore, give publicity to them and bring out the cases in which certain sections of the public have a grievance against what their local authority may be doing.
The hon. Member for Openshaw based his argument on the small numbers attending town meetings and who are thus able to obstruct the progress of a Private Bill of a local corporation by protesting against it at such meetings. But is that an argument against the town meeting? Is not the intention behind it that if a section of the public is injured, or feels itself injured by a Clause in a Private Bill which may not have been called to the notice of the general public in that area, that section should be entitled to bring to the attention of the public the way in which it is being injured, and, to that extent, obstruct the progress of the Bill?
I should like to tell the House of an incident which occurred last year in the


borough which has jurisdiction over the major part of my constituency. It was necessary for that borough, in promoting a Private Bill in this House, to hold a town meeting because a certain section of the community objected to a Clause in the Bill whereby the local authority would have acquired quite a large piece of land under a Clause in the Bill instead of by adopting the ordinary course of serving notice to treat, bargaining, and, if necessary, by following up that procedure with a compulsory purchase order.
The town meeting was held. The hall was packed, and the objectors insisted upon the town clerk not taking the Clauses formally, but reading them through from the start of the Bill. There was something of an uproar during the reading and in the midst of it the lights went out. The hall, and, indeed, the whole of the borough, was plunged into darkness. At the time it was thought that this was a deliberate act of sabotage, whether by the local council or by the protesters I do not know, but, in fact, the black out was due to a fatal accident at the main electricity supply building.
The protest was made by the section of the public which thought it wrong for the council to acquire land without going through the proper procedure of bargaining. The protest having been made in this effective manner, the borough council dropped the Clause. The sequel—this story has a happy ending—was that by bargaining with the owner of the land the council came to a satisfactory agreement over its purchase.
The hon. Member for Openshaw asked what purpose was served by town meetings. In this case, it served the proper purpose of drawing the attention of the public to the course the council was taking, with which a considerable portion of the public disagreed, and resulted finally in the council bargaining and negotiating for the purchase of land and coming to a satisfactory agreement. Surely, that was a case where the minority had a right to voice its point of view.
If I may take an extreme example which occurs to me—it is almost a proverbial story and I have never been able to check whether it is true or not —it is said that there was once a Private Bill, promoted by a local corporation, was going through this House. The Bill

consisted of about 500 Clauses and after, say, Clause 343, subsection (5), paragraph 6, sub-paragraph 8, a further Clause was inserted to the effect that the marriage of the town clerk and his wife should be dissolved. It is said that the Clause slipped through the House without anyone noticing.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett rose—

Mr. Page: May I finish the story, or I shall lose the point of it?
Might it not have been a justifiable action on the part of the town clerk's wife to call a town meeting to protest about that Clause in the Bill? She would have been a minority of one. I use that example merely to show that a very small minority may be injured by an unknown Clause in a Private Bill and that town meetings are a protection against that.

Mr. D. Jones: Under Section 254 (3) of the Local Government Act, 1933, the town clerk's wife would have been able to write to the Minister of Housing and Local Government, calling his attention to the Clause, when I am sure that in the circumstances the Minister would not have authorised the Bill.

Mr. Page: What the hon. Gentleman has said is correct as from 1933. But this happened way back in 1850, or it is said to have happened.

Vice-Admiral Hughes Hallett: Could not the town clerk's wife have petitioned against the Bill?

Mr. Page: Exactly, but in that case she would have had to pay a large sum of money to appear before the House to petition against the Bill. That is the grave objection, that it leaves the injured party to adopt a procedure which is extremely expensive, as many objectors to local Bills have found.
My objection to the Bill is that it deals with a matter of major policy in our democratic system which has lasted in this form for a long time. I do not think that this sort of thing should be dealt with except with the backing of the Government and in a Government Bill as a matter of major policy. It should not be done by means of a Private Member's Bill.

3.25 p.m.

Mr. W. T. Proctor: This is a very important Bill, which indicates a need for a reform in the system of local government procedure. It also indicates the need for a reform in the procedure in the House of Commons. I very much regret that Bills are talked out on Fridays. We ought to come here and decide on the principles put in front of us, and not use the procedure as a means of preventing the opinions of other hon. Members from being expressed. [HON. MEMBERS: "Change the rules of order."] That is precisely what I am suggesting that we should consider.
I do not think that arguments about small meetings are valid when expressed on the Floor of the House today. Six hundred Members are entitled to come here, but this is a fairly small meeting which is being asked to decide on this question—if we are permitted to decide.
The really valid argument against the procedure is that it puts the power of obstruction into the hands of the specialised interests. For instance, I believe that it is correct to say—I use this only as an illustration—that one corporation decided to promote a Bill to introduce parking meters. I happen to believe that parking meters are a nuisance, a loss of capital and a wasteful way of dealing with the problem which they are designed to solve. I do not believe in them; but the people who turned up to stop the introduction of parking meters were the motorists.
If we have a set of democratic machinery which puts the decision in the hands of specialist groups which are merely interested in the question under consideration, there is a lot to be said for the proposed change from the point of view of pure democracy. If our legislation in the House of Commons was dealt with in this way and we had a poll in every constituency before we could proceed any further with the Rent Bill, it would be as dead as a dodo. We should not proceed with it another day. It would be absolutely stopped. No legislation at all would go through the House if we followed this absolute procedure.
I appeal to hon. Members to let the Bill go to Standing Committee for examination. Let us look at the whole procedure and consider whether we can

suggest a way of meeting the valid objection of the borough councils. I represent two boroughs, both of which have written to me asking me to support the Measure. I am loath to interfere with the real democracy which is contained in present procedure, but I think that the power of obstruction which is contained within it should be dealt with. I beg hon. Members opposite to approve the Bill today, so that we may discuss it fully in Committee. That is the way in which to deal with it. Let us make democracy work.
One of the most terrible things facing the civilised world today is the obstruction of democracy. Hon. Gentlemen opposite have suddenly become anti-American. There is in the party opposite a big group of anti-Americans. I beg them to stop imitating the Americans in this filibustering, of which we have seen an example this afternoon.

Sir W. Wakefield: Does not the hon. Gentleman agree that there is an important matter of principle in the Bill which we are discussing on Second Reading? If the principle is decided now, and the Bill is sent to Standing Committee, it will be examined in detail there, but it so happens that quite a number of hon. Members object to the Bill in principle.

Mr. Proctor: I do not think there is a very great difference between us in principle. We all believe in democracy and want to make it work. The borough councils to whom the Bill applies feel that there is great obstruction at present, but that is a detail which we can remove in Committee.

3.31 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Ministry of Housing and Local Government (Mr. J. R. Bevins): It is evident that a number of hon. Members still wish to participate in the debate, and I have no desire to curb their enthusiasm, on whichever side they be. I shall, therefore, make my remarks brief.
I listened to the opening speech of my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wembley, North (Wing Commander Bullus) with very great interest, and to the subsequent five or six speeches all in favour of the Bill, followed by a not inconsiderable contribution by my hon.


Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Dudley Williams), who rather redressed the balance.
This is a very small and very simple Bill. Its sponsors feel that the present procedure of town's meetings and polls is out-dated and outmoded. The opponents, found on both sides of the House, feel that the existing procedure is a bulwark of a sort against ill-judged proposals and represents some sort of protection against cavalier treatment of minorities.
This is one of those happy occasions when I am not called upon to take sides, and is very unusual. I want to emphasise that Her Majesty's Government have made no statement of policy on this question as yet. I do not propose to make any statement on behalf of Her Majesty's Government today. We take the view that a matter dealing with legislative processes is essentially a matter for the House of Commons and, therefore, we shall be content to accept the verdict and the Judgment of the House.

3.33 p.m.

Mr. Anthony Greenwood: I echo what my hon. Friend the Member for Eccles (Mr. Proctor) said a few minutes ago. Those who were in the House of Commons in the early days of 1945 will remember the struggle we had to get from the Government at that time the full use of private Members' time once again. It is a great pity that Friday should appear to be taking on the guise of an occasion when hon. Members come to block legislation rather than to promote it. I hope that hon. Gentlemen who give the appearance of engaging in that practice today will think again and will allow the Bill to go to a Standing Committee, as my hon. Friend suggested. I hope that we shall be able to proceed to the subsequent Bill. There are other important Bills awaiting our consideration.
I would stress the grounds on which we should give the Bill a Second Reading and let it go to a Standing Committee. In the first place, though we removed this safeguard which may, in the past, have been valuable to the rights of minorities, there are still many safeguards still available under the Acts of 1933 and 1939. Resolutions of councils have to be passed by an absolute majority of all the council, at two separate specially-convened meetings, held after due notice has been

given. The Minister has to satisfy himself that the proceedings have been regular. Our own Standing Orders provide further safeguards for the rights of minorities and against the irresponsible exercise of the rights of local authorities. The dangers that have been mentioned have been exaggerated very much by hon. Members who have spoken against the Bill.
My hon. Friend the Member for Openshaw (Mr. W. R. Williams) referred to numbers attending a town's meeting. He elicited from hon. Gentlemen on Government benches the comment that the numbers attending do not really matter. I would like to call attention to three Bills which were submitted for our consideration in the 1954–55 Session. The first was the Salford Corporation Bill. Salford has 118,000 local government electors, of which 60 attended the public meeting. Only 20 of the people at that meeting were not members of the Salford City Council. That is to say, only twenty really bona fide electors in the City of Salford were present.
In the case of the Bristol Corporation Bill in the same Session—and Bristol has a local government electorate of 316,000—there were only 17 at the public meeting and only seven electors at the meeting were not members of the council or officials concerned with the Bill. Cardiff, a city with 172,000 population, promoted the Cardiff Corporation Bill in the same session. At the public meeting which was called to discuss the Bill, only 13 people were present and of those only three were not members of the council or officials. I seriously submit that towns meetings of that kind are really a farce and are no safeguard whatever against irresponsible conduct on the part of local authorities.
To turn briefly to the question of town polls, I think there are three objections to them. I am sorry that the hon. Member for Exeter spoke in a rather disparaging way of the efforts of the Joint Committee of both Houses upon this matter. I still maintain that it is difficult for many ratepayers to answer the questions that are put to them on the ballot paper when towns polls of this kind are demanded. It may be simple for the hon. Member for Exeter, but it is not very easy for the average electors in, for example, the City of Birmingham


to answer the second of the six questions posed to them when Birmingham presented its Bill in 1954. The second point that they had to say whether they were for or against was:
That the electors of the City of Birmingham hereby approve the promotion by the Council of that City of Clause 15 (as to power to nominate tenants of certain properties) of the Birmingham Corporation Bill, 1954, together with so much of the preamble and of the other parts of the Bill as relates or is ancillary to that Clause.
For the average, ordinary elector, it is not easy to be faced with six questions of that kind on which people have to declare their views, and, of course, it is not uncommon for ballot papers of this kind to contain as many as twelve propositions on which a decision has to be given.
In the case of the Birmingham Corporation Bill, had there been a real attempt to obstruct, it would have been possible to have over 60 propositions put upon the ballot paper for the electorate to consider.

Mr. Dudley Williams: I speak entirely from memory, but, as I understand the position on the Birmingham Bill, the people were in favour of all the Clauses except one, which concerned the use of loudspeakers in the streets. They selected at least one Clause which they supported.

Mr. Greenwood: Yes, there was a majority against five of the Clauses and a majority in favour of one.

Mr. J. Silverman: All the other five were matters which concerned one vested interest or another. The position was that the vested interests simply combined to defeat the five Clauses.

Mr. Greenwood: One of the most significant things is that the percentage voting on each of those Clauses was less than 4 per cent. of the local government electorate.
Although the hon. Member for Exeter made great play of the fact that in Felixstowe 46·5 per cent. of the electorate voted, he did not sum up at the end by telling us that of the total of 15 cases which he brought before us for our consideration, only three were cases in which more than 20 per cent. of the electorate took the trouble to vote.
When we remember that this is a very expensive procedure, that polling stations have to be set up, staff recruited and appointed and notices and ballot papers printed, and that the cost is in some cases over £3,000, it is ludicrous that we should expect local authorities to go to all this trouble for so small a result.
My right hon. Friend the Member for Colne Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall) very properly reminded us of the poll at Leicester, of which the total cost was £1,500, in which 3,000 people voted, at an average cost of 10s. a vote. That sort of thing will antagonise the ratepayers and induce them to rebel against what they regard as a waste of their time and a waste of their money. Hon. Gentlemen who object to the Bill must be unaware of the close scrutiny which Parliament itself gives to Private Bills, which have to go through a far more searching scrutiny than many far more important Measures.
It is because we in this House have a due sense of our responsibility that I ask hon. Gentlemen to give the Bill a Second Reading, and then if they think Amendments ought to be made to it they can move them in Committee, and there make their criticisms of the Bill. Let us now agree to that course, and we can then discuss other important Bills awaiting our consideration.

3.41 p.m.

Sir Patrick Spens: I want to say a word or two in support of the Bill. I suppose I am one of the oldest Tories in the House now, and represent one of the strongest Tory divisions in the kingdom, but I am convinced that the procedure which has obtained to date is now out of date. It is true that on many occasions it has protected small minorities. There is no doubt about that.
The Bill would do away with one of our oldest democratic protections for minorities. Indeed, I think that this protection probably dates back to the meetings in The Agora, at Athens. This procedure of holding town meetings has been traditional throughout our history. To do away with it is a very serious thing indeed, and there may be a good deal to be said in support of the contention that it is questionable whether this change should be made by means of a Private Member's Bill.
None the less, what we know and what we have heard shows that this is a rather unpredictable type of procedure. I think that it has been abused by pressure groups and, therefore, there is a very great deal to be said against it. On the other hand, if we are to do away with it, as I think we ought, it follows that we have to be absolutely certain that our procedure in this House affords the protection which these town meetings afford. We must consider very carefully what one of my hon. Friends said just now, whether our Private Bill procedure is sufficiently cheap for use by people who may be injured by, say, a proposal in a corporation Bill. If we are to make this change I am quite certain we ought to reconsider our Private Bill procedure.
However, I do not think that on broad principle this town meeting procedure can be defended now. I know that some of my hon. Friends—and quite rightly—think that it is a brake on certain types of local legislation to which they strongly object. It has, indeed, occasionally proved to have been a brake, but it can be a brake only: it can never be a complete stoppage. If the Opposition comes into power again nothing any town meeting can do would be of the slightest use in preventing the Opposition from providing for State trading throughout the country, if it were determined to have it. That procedure can be only a brake upon that sort of thing.
The right thing for us to do is to attend far more to making sure we get the right majorities on our local councils. To rely on anything like a town meeting to prevent a hostile majority on a local council from doing what they do not want it to do is absolute foolishness on the part of the ratepayers. The right thing to do is to make sure we get the right councils in our boroughs. If we do, we shall not have the legislation we object to. I can say that, speaking, as I do, for a borough where the right majority is in office at the present time.
We ought to give the Bill a Second Reading, for I think that the time has come for it, and I am myself prepared to vote in favour of the Second Reading.

Wing Commander Bullus: I beg to move, "That the Question be now put."

Mr. Deputy-Speaker (Sir Charles MacAndrew): Sir Wavell Wakefield.

3.45 p.m.

Sir Wavell Wakefield: I am sure that the whole House is grateful to my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wembley, North (Wing Commander Bullus) for introducing the Bill. He has taken the opportunity of a Private Members' day to introduce a Bill that allows hon. Members on both sides to express a variety of views.
That this is a non-party Bill is quite clear from the fact that it was seconded by the hon. Member for The Hartlepools (Mr. David Jones). We have heard on the Government side arguments both for and against the Bill. Just now, on the Opposition side, it was suggested that time had been wasted and there had been filibustering. We have had two and a half hours of discussion on a matter of considerable importance and nobody could allege, from the speeches that we have heard, that there has been any waste of time or filibustering at all.

Mr. Glenvil Hall: Surely the hon. Member will agree that the mere fact that we have been discussing the Bill today, for only two and a half hours, is not the full story upon which we should base our decision. We know that for the past thirty years three committees have gone into this matter and that all have reported in favour of abolishing town polls, including the last committee, which took considerable evidence two years ago and, by a unanimous recommendation—[HON. MEMBERS: "No."]—unanimous on this issue—agreed on that recommendation.

Mr. Ronald Bell: May I draw the attention of my hon. Friend the Member for St. Marylebone (Sir W. Wakefield) to page xxxiii of the Report of the Joint Committee on Private Bill Procedure, where it is stated that a Division took place on this issue and it is shown that this was plainly a majority decision. Indeed, my hon. Friend will see that the majority of Members of this House on the Committee opposed the recommendation.

Sir W. Wakefield: That proves exactly the point that I was trying to make.
We had the case for the Bill deployed very fully by my hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wembley, North and the hon. Member for The Hartlepools, and


indeed, the right hon. Member for Come Valley (Mr. Glenvil Hall). They base their argument on a circular issued by the Association of Municipal Corporations and the Urban District Councils' Association. When I received that circular I thought that it made a strong case. Indeed hon. Members, in supporting the various arguments set forth in that document, quite rightly gave full weight to the points that it makes.
But, equally, my hon. Friend the Member for Exeter (Mr. Dudley Williams) took considerable time and trouble—and none of that was wasted time—in replying in detail to the strong arguments put forward. I thought that my hon. Friend put some very forcible arguments, supported by a great deal of fact. All that he said was worthy of very considerable thought and attention by the House.
The right hon. Member for Colne Valley stated that there was not much interest in this matter, because he had received only one circular—from an association of hotel-keepers, or some such organisation. My hon. and gallant Friend the Member for Wembley, North said he had received a circular from a number of motoring organisations. I have received a number of circulars from national organisations putting forward various points of view. I think it is only right that the points of view of these national organisations should be ventilated here in this House and that that is our duty.
One of the circulars which I have received was from the Theatres National Committee, which, I think, comprises many organisations covering the theatre world. I should like to quote one point which is made in the circular, which says:
If these safeguards are abolished, there is no adequate opportunity for local electors to dispose of objectionable proposals in Private Bills promoted by their local authorities.
That is really the crux of the whole matter. This and other national organisations feel, and it has been pointed out here, that a local Bill may contain a proposal which may be highly objectionable and unfair to some sections of the ratepayers or to some local trading interest, as well as being undesirable in principle.
Under the existing procedure, there is a real opportunity for the objections to be heard locally, and I cannot see why it

should be necessary to remove these opportunities for sections of the ratepayers, if they so wish, to draw attention to something which they think is undesirable in a Bill. We have had it pointed out, and I suggest that it is of importance, that whole Bills have gone through with the deletion of perhaps only one or two objectionable Clauses. That is exactly the intention in having the kind of procedure which now exists. It is there to enable any group of people who desire to have the opportunity publicly to show why there is objection to a certain Clause, and why they think that it should be withdrawn, but that does not mean that a local Bill, which is desired for the general well-being of the locality, should not go through.
What happens is that the objectionable Clause is removed, and I really cannot see why that kind of procedure should not be allowed to continue. It seems to me to be quite democratic. What we are doing here is taking away a long established right, which, as my hon. Friend suggested in his speech, time and again in recent years has been used properly and effectively. Why not, therefore, continue it?
I have another circular here from the Caterers' Association, which makes three or four points. The points made by these national organisations represent the views of a great many other national organisations as well. To show that this organisation is national and not a small, petty body, I would tell the House that it represents some 7,000 caterers and hoteliers in the country, operating about 25,000 catering establishments of all types and sizes situated throughout Great Britain, so that it is a responsible organisation which does look after the interests of a most important section of our industry.
Here again, this Association says that it is firmly of the opinion that the provisions which now exist are of the utmost importance, providing, as they do, a most necessary form of democratic control over legislative proposals which might otherwise pass unnoticed by the citizens who are ultimately to be affected by them. That is quite an important point, because in a Private Bill of this kind it is so easy to slip in a Clause, a subsection, or a sentence or two, about which nobody knows anything. Unless somebody is on


the watch, and draws public attention to it, something might well slip through which might be most undesirable.
We all know that there are common Clauses for Private Bills, and that local authorities do like Ito put in their Bills Clauses which create new precedents. If a Bill goes through with that Clause creating a precedent in it, then we may say goodbye to turning down any Clause containing similar provisions in the future, because everybody would then say, "That has gone through already. A precedent has been created. What is wrong with it?" So that may well be said to be dangerous, and the provision for towns meetings and polls is the kind of safeguard which draws attention to that kind of Clause and prevents such a thing happening.
Again, I want to refer to what the Caterers' Association has said. What I am about to say shows how the opportunity given under the present procedure works. As an example, the Association quotes a Clause in the Birmingham Corporation Bill and shows how that sought to empower the Corporation to operate civic restaurants.

Mr. George Wigg: On a point of order, Mr. Speaker. Shortly before you occupied the Chair the hon. and gallant Member for Wembley, North (Wing Commander Bullus), who moved the Second Reading of the Bill, moved the Closure, and, of course, Mr. Deputy-Speaker did not accept it. Would you tell me whether the hon. and gallant Member who moved the Closure has to do so again for your ruling, or whether the original moving of the Closure has been considered by yourself?

Mr. Speaker: The Closure must be moved when I am in the Chair. Any previous attempt to move it would be ineffectual and null and void, but to save time I may say that I could not accept such a Motion at this time.

Sir W. Wakefield: I was giving an example of how, under the present procedure, an association operates, and operates satisfactorily. As I have said, there were proposals in the Birmingham

Corporation Bill for the Corporation to operate civic restaurants and, naturally, the caterers objected. What happened then? The association, in conjunction with local hotel and catering associations, approached the Birmingham Corporation with a view to trying to negotiate Amendments to the Clause or, if possible, its withdrawal from the Bill.
This quite proper means of discussion and negotiation and approach to the Bill was unsuccessful. What happened then? Exactly what is intended in the present procedure, a poll was requisitioned so that the ratepayers could consider this proposal and, in their wisdom, vote for or against it. So there was the opportunity provided exactly—

Wing Commander Bullus: Wing Commander Bullus rose in his place and claimed to move, That the Question be now put, but Mr. SPEAKER withheld his assent and declined then to put that Question.

Sir W. Wakefield: —as is intended under the present procedure, and if this Bill is given its Second Reading that procedure would be stopped. What happened as a result of having this town meeting? The citizens of Birmingham were circularised. They were given an opportunity to consider the situation. What was the result? The result was that by 17,102 votes to 10,829—

Mr. Lipton: What is the population of Birmingham?

Sir W. Wakefield: —this Clause was rejected.
In reply to the hon. Member for Brixton (Mr. Lipton) there was, nevertheless, a substantial majority showing that 17,000 people were against the inclusion of such a Clause in the Bill. Is that undemocratic? Is that immoral? Surely that is a typical example showing that those who wish to support this procedure are doing something which is contrary to the individual rights of citizens. I suggest that it would be wrong—

It being Four o'clock, the debate stood adjourned.

Debate to be resumed upon Friday next.

AERIAL ADVERTISING BILL

Read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 38 (Committal of Bills).

MAINTENANCE AGREEMENTS BILL

Read a Second time.

Bill committed to a Standing Committee pursuant to Standing Order No. 38 (Committal of Bills).

NORTHERN IRELAND (COMPENSATION FOR COMPULSORY PURCHASE) BILL

Not amended (in the Standing Committee), considered; read the Third time and passed.

ANGLO-PORTUGUESE TRADE

Motion made, and Question proposed, That this House do now adjourn.—[Mr. Bryan.]

4.1 p.m.

Dr. Reginald Bennett: Tomorrow, Her Majesty leaves on her State visit to Portugal. I feel that this is a useful occasion on which to draw the attention of a "crowded and expectant" House to the problems of Anglo-Portuguese trade. It is a trade which at the moment is giving grounds for some concern, and it seems, in several ways which I propose to mention, to be coming on hard times.
It is often said that Portugal is our oldest ally, but it is not generally realised how old the alliance is. In 1353 the first alliance between our countries was made, an alliance between the Government of this country and Lisbon and Oporto, a commercial alliance. On 16th June, 1373, a treaty of alliance and friendship was drawn up between King Edward III of this country and King Fernando of Portugal. That was added to thirteen years later, and the treaty of Windsor came about. So for over 600 years we have been in a state of alliance with Portugal, an alliance founded on commercial matters, and the latest addition to the treaties that bind us was the Treaty of 1703, the Methuen Treaty, in which

there was an arrangement that Portugal should import British textiles and that we should import Portuguese wines preferentially as against those of France and other countries.
Nowadays, I regret to say, the picture seems somewhat less happy. Anglo-Portuguese trade has been unbalanced for a number of years. There has been a deficit. There is no great harm in a deficit, but what is alarming is that the deficit seems to be taking an unfavourable turn and increasing. I have some figures to support what I say. While our exports to Portugal are increasing, our imports from Portugal are decreasing, thus making Portugal's balance more difficult.
In 1954, the United Kingdom exported to Portugal goods worth £27·3 million. In 1955, that figure rose to £30·8 million, and in 1956 it was £32 million. As against that, the United Kingdom imported from Portugal in 1954 £16·4 million worth of goods; in 1955, £20·2 million, and in 1956 it dropped to £19·97 million. In other words, since last year the trade gap for Portugal has widened from £10·6 million to £12 million, a matter of concern to both Governments and, incidentally, a matter of some distress to a great British interest situated in Portugal.
I am therefore asking my hon. Friend to take note of this difficulty and try to do what he can to help. As my hon. Friend knows, Portugal has been a very good market for us. For instance, since the war we have provided three great hydro-electric stations and now there are such matters as railway electrification and a tube railway for Lisbon, which are of interest to us, as also to France. Germany, Switzerland, Sweden and, no doubt, others.
Recently, German competition in the export market has become tough, but, happily, our ability to compete has recovered in recent years and we have recently managed to get an order for a £2 million co-axial cable and a £250,000 mechanical handling plant for Angola in Portuguese Africa. We have recovered our competitive power largely thanks to Government action in this country.
Now there is a great iron and steel project in Portugal which has been under consideration for no less than two years. It amounts to about £10 million and Krupps of Germany are very closely


interested in it, as, indeed, are we. Clearly, it will be difficult for Portugal to accept tenders from this country readily, if we are not permitting its exports to enter this country to a reasonable extent. I therefore feel that it is necessary for us now to review the imports from Portugal to see if help can be given.
How is this to be done? There is one trade which has been conspicuously damaged since the war, the one I mentioned earlier, which has no less than £12 million of British money invested in Portugal itself. I mean the port wine trade, a trade with which most hon. Members are greatly in sympathy, no doubt all those hon. Members now present. The port wine trade began after the Methuen Treaty owing to the favourable provisions of that treaty for port wine. It now amounts to about one-third of the sum of Portuguese exports to us, but that one-third, I regret to say. is in itself less than half the volume of the trade in port wine before the war.
Then we used to take four million gallons a year which has dropped year after year since the war to about 1–7 million gallons a year. This is not altogether of disinterest, in that we have British funds invested in Portugal which stand to benefit from any improvement we can make in this trade. For instance, of 80 wine shipping firms in Portugal, 26 were British, although within the last ten years ten have gone out of business, or left British ownership, and there are now only 16 firms which are British owned.
That is a particular problem which I ask my hon. Friend to consider. The reason for the collapse of this trade is by no means difficult to see. It is the simplest of all, that is that the stuff costs too much. There are many reasons for that in an inflationary period, not least the fact that 8s. 4d. a bottle is paid to the British Government. Port has to be able better to compete in our markets with other imports and the trade association, which I understand exists to further port selling in this country, will be able to do a great deal to improve the sales of port here. It does not need to do very much to encourage people to drink vintage or crusted port. Perhaps the 8s. 4d. a bottle does not act so heavily against a wine which, through its merits,

is exceptionally expensive anyway, but what is suffering greatly is at the other end of the scale, what one might call the pub trade, in that the once familiar "port and lemon" has almost become a thing of the past.
There is, of course, a great deal which could be done to encourage the drinking of Portugese wine and port wine among the many millions who, since the war, have started drinking table wines for the first time. There is a much wider consumption of table wines, but port has been at a great disadvantage.
The trade association, do what it will, will have a hopelessly uphill fight if the Government are against it, and I regret to say that they are against it now. At another time I shall hope to draw attention to the fact that the duty on port is now 525 per cent. more than it was before the war—six times as much in all—whereas the duty on other wines is not more than twice as much.

Mr. Speaker: The hon. Member is not entitled on the Adjournment to urge any measure which would involve legislation, such as an alteration in the duty on wine.

Dr. Bennett: I am sorry, Mr. Speaker, but I did preface my remark by saying that on another occasion I should seek to draw attention to that matter. It was an allusion in passing, a side swipe, so to speak, at this subject.
I ask my hon. Friend to take notice of the difficulties under which the trade is labouring, to study this particular matter and do what he can to help, because, through helping this import trade to England, our export trade to Portugal can be assisted and only in this way can we make it increase. I should say that the present moment is very timely for doing that because the trade talks are to take place on 26th February and our oldest ally—an ally of 600 years standing —is not a bad country with which to try to foster good trade at a time when in other countries and mostly in other continents bad faith seems to be a primary tenet of government. Thirdly, Her Majesty's visit to Portugal at this time is a very good occasion on which to consider our problems of trade, to try to clear up the difficulties which exist and thus bring help and new prosperity to a relationship which has both history and mutual interest to recommend it.

4.12 p.m.

The Parliamentary Secretary to the Board of Trade (Mr. F. J. Erroll): I should like to join with my hon. Friend the Member for Gosport and Faraham (Dr. Bennett) in agreeing that this is indeed an appropriate occasion for a short discussion on the subject of Anglo-Portuguese trade, in view not only of the visit of Her Majesty to Portugal tomorrow, but also because of the forthcoming Anglo-Portuguese annual trade talks.
Before dealing with the detailed matters which my hon. Friend has raised, I should like to give the House some facts about our overall trading position with Portugal. The United Kingdom at present, as my hon. Friend pointed out, has a trading surplus, not only with what I would call Peninsula Portugal, but also with the Portuguese monetary area—which includes the Azores and Madeira—as well as with all Portuguese overseas territories. Our exports to Portugal have been increasing during the last three years.
I should like to make one or two minor corrections of figures my hon. Friend mentioned because they serve to show how well we are doing. The figures I wish to give are that over the last three years our exports have risen from £27·8 million in 1954 to £32·7 million in 1956, that is with the Portuguese monetary area. The figures for Peninsula Portugal show a rise from £18 million to £21·3 million.
Our principal exports to Portugal include coal, coke, iron and steel, general machinery, electrical machinery and road vehicles. United Kingdom imports from the Portuguese monetary area have also risen, from £16·4 million in 1954 to £20 million in 1956. Our principal imports include wolfram, pit-props, timber, which is mainly cork and cork manufactures, wine, fish and edible nuts.
My hon. Friend referred to the need to obtain permission in order to import more from Portugal into this country. I should like to correct that misapprehension on his part because practically all the trade between the United Kingdom and Portugal is liberalised in both directions, that is to say, there are practically no quantitative or other restrictions on the free movement of goods and materials in either direction between the two countries.
My hon. Friend also referred to the many treaties that exist between Portugal and this country, including one old commercial treaty. As he himself pointed out, our trade arrangements with Portugal are today settled annually and are confined mainly to the negotiation of quotas for the import of the few goods which are still subject to quantitative or other restrictions and which are, of course, therefore, not fully liberalised.
Trade talks, as my hon. Friend mentioned, will start for 1957 in the course of the next few days. My hon. Friend referred particularly to the United Kingdom surplus, or, as he preferred to call it, the deficit, in our trading balance with Portugal. It is quite true that the United Kingdom enjoys a trading surplus, but one should also look at the sterling area. The fact is that the rest of the sterling area is in deficit with Portugal to a rather greater extent than the United Kingdom is in surplus, so that when one comes to look at Portugal's trade with the sterling area as a whole, one finds that we are slightly in deficit. That is the normal pattern year by year. The deficit runs at the rate of about £2 million per annum, and this is cleared through the machinery of the European Payments Union so that, in actual fact, our trade is in reasonable balance as between the sterling area and Portugal.
My hon. Friend had a good deal to say on the subject of imports of port wine and there is, of course, considerable scope for discussion as to the reasons for the decline in the consumption of port wine in this country. I should perhaps mention that very little port wine is drunk in Portugal itself, almost the whole of the output being exported to other countries. Though consumption in the United Kingdom has fallen from a figure of 4·16 million gallons in 1936 to 1·64 million gallons in 1955, the United Kingdom still remains the principal market for port, taking in 1955 no less than 37 per cent. of Portugal's total production.
It is worth pointing out, too, that no less than 46 per cent. of the decline in port exports between 1936 and 1955 was accounted for by lower sales in markets other than that of the United Kingdom. This would, I feel, in itself be sufficient to disprove the argument that it is the high rate of duty on port which is mainly


responsible for the decline in consumption in this country.
There is, however, a further factor to be taken into account. The duty to which my hon. Friend referred applies to all heavy wines and not just to port. Sherry, being a heavy wine, bears the same rate of duty as port, and sherry consumption in this country in 1955 at 2·86 million gallons has almost returned to the old pre-war level of consumption of 2·88 million gallons, which was consumed in 1936.
If my hon. Friend would like a further comparison, the Australian port-type wines have a preferential rate of duty. The consumption of these port-type wines has fallen now to 10 per cent. of the pre-war consumption, whereas the consumption of the port wine from Portugal is still running at 33 per cent. of the pre-war consumption; which would seem to indicate that the principal factors are not just matters of price but may be a change in social and other habits. Indeed, I think all of us who keep our eyes open are aware of substantial changes in the drinking habits of the British people, whether of alcoholic or non-alcoholic beverages.
What my hon. Friend has said in this debate may or may not represent the whole picture, but certainly the encouragement of port wine drinking is essentially a matter for the trade to foster, and I know that the Port Wine Trade Association is taking steps to popularise the drinking of port in the changed circumstances of today. The Board of Trade is concerned simply with the general flow of trade between the two countries, and I am sure that my hon. Friend will not expect me to make any reference—particularly in view of your Ruling, Mr. Speaker—to the rates of duty on heavy wines which are a matter for my right hon. Friend the Chancellor of the Exchequer. In passing, I should say that the Port Wine Trade Association has recently submitted a memorandum to the Chancellor setting out its case, which I am sure will receive a full and careful examination by the Treasury.
It should be mentioned that we have imposed no restrictions whatever on the importation of port wines into this country. If the British public wish to drink more port, it can be freely imported. Other European countries, on the

other hand, impose quantitative restrictions, and it is possible that they occasionally resort to using a port quota as a bargaining counter in arranging for the import of their own nationals' goods into Portugal.
I should like to say a word or two about growing German competition. My hon. Friend referred to the steel project where, of course, there is powerful competition, some of it I believe from Germany. Germany's share in Portuguese imports has risen rapidly during the last few years, and that country has more than regained her traditional share of the Portuguese market, while we have been no more than holding our own. It must be remembered that Germany was Portugal's most important supplier before the war, and that country's lead over the United Kingdom at present is confined to a few principal groups of commodities.
Germany's advantages at present are only in one or two fields with which I may deal. These include manufactured fertilisers, where shortages of supply in the United Kingdom make it difficult to increase our exports; ferrous and nonferrous ores, alloys and finished steel products: here again, the United Kingdom shortage is well known and prevents exports from the United Kingdom on a greater scale. In the case of electrical machinery we have to admit that there is a willingness on the part of Germany to accept a large proportion of Portuguese labour, particularly on contracts which include site work as well as the supply of machinery. There is also a willingness on the part of continental competitors to encourage the local manufacture of components and the simpler types of electrical equipment which may be required in the fulfilment of part of a large composite contract. This might apply in the case of steel projects and certain other types of projects in connection with Portugal's six-year plan.
We must remember that particularly in the field of electrical manufacture the British electrical manufacturers have very full order books and it is not always easy for them to meet Portuguese requirements as quickly as could be desired. I think the House will agree from what I have said that our exports and our re-exports to Portugal are rising fairly steadily in spite of supply shortages. Furthermore,


we offer a market for Portuguese exports including especially port wine, which is virtually free from quantitative restrictions. German competition has undoubtedly made its mark in Portugal, but, in the main, it is no more than a reversion to the pre-war pattern of trade with Portugal.
Portugal has very large reserves of foreign currency—this is a point which should be remembered—and there is nothing to prevent her financing larger imports from the United Kingdom if she so desires. The fact that we have a favourable balance of trade with Portugal is therefore, no obstacle to further imports by Portugal from us.
We, too, have a large stake in the Portuguese economy. The principal United Kingdom assets in Portugal total some £25 million and there is, therefore, every reason why our long and friendly relations should be still more closely cemented by increasing trade between the two countries. I am sure that what my hon. Friend has said today will play its part in increasing the commercial friendship between the two countries, and that we, can look forward to a steadily developing volume of trade between the United Kingdom and Portugal.

Question put and agreed to.

Adjourned accordingly at twenty-six minutes past Four o'clock.